Prima's Blessing
by White Aster
Summary: When a meditation with the Matrix of Leadership reminds him of the Prime's priestly duties, Optimus decides to hold the Rite of Prima's Blessing:  an ancient ritual devoted to connection, unity...and the Prime's submission to all Cybertronians.
1. The Call

_Author's Note: This fic is set at no particular time in a mostly-G1 universe with the good parts of other continuities thrown in for fun. (I do love me some Lord Protector goodness.) It's self-indulgent, yes, but I'm writing giant robot porn here. Work with me._

_OVERALL WARNINGS: This fic will contain heavy (Cybertronian) religious overtones, as well as many kinks and a double-Skyfire-full of different pairings. For the entire fic, warnings for religious sex, orgies, sex while in altered states of consciousness (religious trance), benevolent code rewriting, a touch of noncon if you turn your head and squint, voyeurism, threesomes and moresomes, size kink, stripping down to protoforms, and a very pushy deity. Overall, this fic will be fun and fluff and possibly shouldn't be taken very seriously. There will be other kinks and themes, but those will be noted in the header of each chapter. _

_Everyone keep your hands and feet inside the fic at all times. And away we go!  
><em>

"You are certain this line is secure, Teletraan?"

"Affirmative."

Optimus vented a long sigh then squared his shoulders. "Very well. Connect."

It took a long moment (during which Optimus had second, third, and fourth thoughts about this) before the screen flickered to life, a familiar face scowling back at him.

"Prime. What a PLEASANT surprise." The Decepticon leader's expression twisted into a smirk. "Contacting me to negotiate your surrender?"

"No, Megatron." Optimus continued before either of them could distract him from his purpose. "Have you calculated the Cybertronian date recently?"

Megatron's scowl deepened. "Of course I have. ONE of us deals with Cybertron on a regular basis, Prime."

Optimus stiffened at the completely unfair insinuation, but then reminded himself that no, no, now was not the time for arguments. "I did not contact you to argue, Megatron."

"Then why DID you contact me, Prime? To reminisce? I know exactly what the date is. What of it? You and I both know that it means nothing. HAS meant nothing for kilivorns even before we crashed on this rock."

"I am going to hold the Rite of Prima's Blessing," Optimus said, voice steady.

Megatron's optics widened, then narrowed, hard and glittering. "So you called to GLOAT. I didn't think you had it in you, PRIME."

The title, thrown at him with particular scorn, had exactly the opposite effect than what Megatron had probably been going for. Optimus straightened. "I did not. I will hold the ritual, at the traditional time, for all who observe the traditional strictures. I wish to negotiate a ceasefire for the duration of the festival."

Megatron stared at him for a long moment before laughing. "Oh, yes, a ceasefire so that the Autobots can ENJOY themselves. That is just like you, Prime. Why, exactly, should I pass up the chance to annihilate all of you?"

Oh, Optimus could HEAR both Prowl and Red Alert glitching already. "The ritual will not be held in the Ark, Megatron, but in a neutral location. I'm transmitting the coordinates now. And as I said, ALL who observe the traditional strictures are welcome."

THAT got Megatron's attention. His optics narrowed. "You are glitched. You would-"

"-do my duty as Prime and offer Prima's blessing to all Cybertronians? Yes. Yes, I will." Corner turned and no going back, Optimus felt a weight lifted off his shoulders. It was replaced by another, but that responsibility was old, familiar, and well-missed.

Megatron leaned forward, hissing, "I should call your bluff and bring the entire Decepticon army. What would you do then, Prime?"

The thought was...more than a little intimidating, but the Matrix, as it had taken to doing lately, pulsed supportive warmth along his circuits. Optimus reset his optics, slowly, letting a smile creep into his voice. "I have a few ideas."

Megatron just stared at him for a long, long moment, before slashing a hand dismissively. "Glitching, ridiculous AUTOBOT. You have your ceasefire Prime, but for the length of the festival and not a breem more." He slammed his hand down on the control panel in front of him, cutting the connection with an aborted screech of feedback.

Optimus sighed, settling back on his heels. _Well,_ he thought, _that went about as well as could be expected._

"Did you just do what I think you just did, boss bot?"

Optimus turned, not particularly surprised to see Jazz leaning against the wall just inside the command center doorway. His frame just a bit warm still, Optimus caught himself before his optics slid inappropriately over his third in command's sleek frame. _Yes, yes,_ he thought resignedly at the Matrix. _You have made your point. We are GETTING there._ "Most likely," he answered.

His spec ops commander shook his helm in wonder, pushing away from the wall and sauntering over. "No offense, boss, but what brought this on? I mean, it's been a long time since we even had the festival, let alone the blessing rites, even before our little nap."

Optimus put a hand over his chestplates. "Something tells me that it is time. My last merge with the Matrix was...illuminating." He stopped, searching for words to describe the wordless desires the Matrix had communicated to him. "We see ourselves as we always have, Jazz. We see war and factions and difference. But...I am beginning to understand that Primus does not view us in that fashion. He sees one people, his people, one body torn apart and slowly bleeding out from that rift. Perhaps not physically, but...I am the Prime. It is my duty to see to our peoples' spiritual needs, and I have been...lax in that."

Jazz laid a hand on his arm. "You do your best, Optimus. No one asks for more than that."

_None but he who has always questioned me, for good or ill._ Optimus nodded in acceptance of the support if not agreement. If he had done his best, perhaps his Lord Protector would not be his greatest enemy. But that was an old regret, one he had long practice at pushing aside. "Still. It is time. I have not held any rituals at all for much too long."

Jazz held up his hands. "Not to tell you your job or anything, but you really think they'll hold to a ceasefire when you just told 'em where we'd all be, unarmed and easy pickings? Which, by the way, I can't WAIT to hear you tell the others. Better have Ratchet on hand when you break it to Prowl and Red Alert."

Optimus looked back at the dark viewscreen. "Megatron is a traditionalist, at least where these things are concerned. He will not desecrate one of the most sacred Cybertronian rites for any gain."

Jazz tipped his head down a bit. "You...really sure about that?"

Memories blossomed in his processor, of this ritual, long, long ago. Of a young Prime, nearly incandescent with the charge of his first blessing and an only slightly less-young Lord Protector kneeling before him, optics full of fire and hands trembling slightly as he reached up to touch...

Optimus shook his head, shunting aside the image and the heat it brought with it. He could only hope that doing the Matrix's will would regain him his ability to _focus_. He vented a sigh. "I know that it seems...reckless, Jazz. Believe me, I understand the danger. However, Megatron has taunted me countless times about how I shirk my duties as Prime. He honestly believes that, just as he honestly believes that he is fulfilling his duty as Lord Protector. No, he will protect the sanctity of the rite, if nothing else."

Jazz tilted his head and one hand in a clear _if you say so_. "You think he'll come?"

_Primus, I hope so. Or do I?_ "I don't know. Megatron will likely hesitate to give the Decepticons any reason to feel closer to me, on any level. A ceasefire was all I expected..."

"But not all you hoped for," Jazz observed, sharp as ever.

Optimus shuttered his optics, his frame settling as his spark ached. "I hope for many things, Jazz. All of our people taking Primus' blessing as it was intended...as a passing of joy from the divine, as a connection to one's fellow Cybertronians...I can't help but see that as a good thing. Perhaps the cancelling of the public blessings was...the first step in losing our way."

Jazz grinned. "Don't have to convince me, boss bot. I remember the festivals. No blessings from the Prime in my part of town, of course, but believe me, us common folk kept the spirit alive. Best parties I've EVER been to."

Optimus smiled. "I am glad to hear I will have at least one ally in trying to convince the others." He cocked his head, considering. "In fact...I would like you to be my acolyte, if you are willing."

It was not often that Optimus got the opportunity to see Jazz completely speechless. "Me? But...I...ME? Optimus, you can't get much less sacred than me, and you can take that whatever way you want, and it'll still be true! Why me?"

"Because you support me in this," Optimus said, simply. "And you are as much a child of Primus as any other, Jazz. Acolytes do not need special training, at least not for this ritual. All they need is a willing frame, an open spark, and readiness to freely share both with...anyone who attends."

Decepticons included. It was a lot to ask, Optimus knew, and he could see Jazz giving it due consideration as he tilted his helm. Megatron. Starscream. Soundwave. Cassettes. Seekers. Constructicons. _Starscream._ Anyone else they had ever faced across a battlefield.

Optimus had little doubt that Jazz COULD do it, of course. He was _spec ops_. But the spirit of this particular duty required a bit more than lying back and thinking of Cybertron. He was pleased that Jazz seemed to take that into consideration, as the first thing he asked was, "What will it...feel like? The blessing? Because I gotta admit, Shockwave shows up, I'm gonna need some help stayin' in the mood."

Optimus chuckled. It was unPrimelike of him, but he had to admit that he hoped Shockwave stayed on Cybertron, too. He queried his own memory banks, and they readily provided him with memories, their timestamps ancient but their perfectly-archived emotion and sensation still intense enough to stutter his ventilation. He sent them in a databurst to Jazz, who made a choked sound as his fans kicked on.

"That is, of course, what it feels like for the Prime. I can't guarantee that it will be that...intense...for the blessed as well. Perhaps you can ask another who has attended the Rites. Mirage, I am fairly certain, has been an acolyte at least once."

Jazz shook his helm hard and drew in a long ventilation. "No need. If Primus doesn't have any objections, neither do I. One willing frame and spark, reporting for duty, sir."


	2. Building The Temple

_PAIRINGS: Optimus Prime/Hoist/Grapple, _

_WARNINGS (for this section): threesome, sticky sex, fingering, voyeurism_

The next day's officers' meeting began with Optimus Prime announcing that he would be holding the Rite of Prima's Blessing. Yes, it would be at the traditional universal time, roughly five Earth days away. Yes, it would be for the traditional period of time (roughly three Earth days), involve the traditional strictures (uninstalled or temporarily deactivated weapons and as little armor as possible). Yes, he would be fulfilling the Prime's traditional role as grantor of Primus' blessing upon the assembled mechs and would expect all to pass it on as was proper. Including to any guests that might show up. And oh yes, he had already notified Megatron of the event and its location and told him that the Decepticons were invited, provided they observed the strictures and behaved themselves.

This announcement was met with stunned silence. Optimus sat back down in his chair and folded his hands on the table, waiting for the furor to start.

Ironhide gave Optimus a long look that faded into an incredulous headshake.

Jazz just grinned.

Ratchet, after a long moment of thought, declared that there was no way he was going to strip everyone down to ritual specs. Too many mechs, too much armor, too much kibble due to the Earth alt forms. Prime, yes. He could bow to tradition. Everyone else? Could make do with what they could take off themselves.

Red Alert finally got himself under control and asked for details on where the ritual would take place. When the answer was not "in the Ark, under full security lockdown", he nearly exploded into agitated motion, pointing out that it would be impossible to secure the area against Decepticon attack.

Prowl agreed, citing almost-calmly that Megatron's historical probability of breaking any given ceasefire was 74.9%.

Red Alert declared that as Chief Security Officer there was no way he could allow Decepticons near unarmed and unarmored Autobots-

85.6% of broken ceasefires involved assault or murder of unarmed mechs, Prowl supplied.

-let alone that close to the _Prime_-

59.7% of broken ceasefires involved attacks specifically on the Prime himself, Prowl added. Usually by Megatron himself.

-and the very nature of the ritual itself would provide easy opportunities for the Decepticons to hack distracted Autobots-

As happened in 53% of total Autobot encounters with Soundwave outside a battlefield.

...and so on. When, ten minutes later, Red Alert ended his (helpfully statistic-laden) list of objections, it was only because Ratchet had gotten fed up, threatened to put Red Alert in stasis through the entire ritual if he glitched, and told Prowl to stop encouraging him.

Everyone looked over at Optimus, who waited a klik and then replied that Red Alert had several good points and that he was certainly willing to allow a perimeter of armed and armored Autobots around the ritual site, if they were under strict orders to react ONLY in defense...and if and ONLY if they switched in and out during the ritual so that they got to enjoy themselves.

Red Alert sputtered static. Ratchet sighed. Ironhide rolled his optics. Prowl threw up his hands in defeat. Jazz grinned.

Optimus, being treated to a particularly pleasant vision of his senior staff, stripped to their protoforms and entwined in various combinations, smiled and asked if there was any other business.

* * *

><p>Later that morning, Optimus called a brief gathering of Autobots and announced his intentions to the rest of the crew. The excitement that greeted him, especially from mechs who were too young to have participated in the Prime-led festivals, was palpable. It was dampened somewhat by his gentle reminder that all Cybertronians, regardless of faction, would be welcome. He cut off the protests by reminding everyone that the ritual was just as important to the Decepticons as it was to the Autobots and that any participant that disrupted the festival would be punished for blasphemy to the full extent of traditional law...as well as by not being allowed to participate in this or any other rituals. The hint that this was just the first in a revived liturgical calendar, as well as the unspoken reassurance that Prime would never do such a thing if he thought it would harm any of them, was enough to distract all but the most pessimistic bots. As he left the common room, Optimus was cheered to hear several conversations centering on the relative merits of various Decepticons.<p>

His second stop that afternoon was a meeting with Hoist and Grapple. He met them at the entrance to the Ark, nodding to the both of them. "Sir," Hoist said, as they transformed and rolled out. "Is it true? I heard..."

"Yes, it's true," Optimus said. "In fact, that is why I wish to talk to you." He explained as they made their way to the site, the desert sands giving way to scrub and eventually to forest as they climbed up into the mountains. The road narrowed with every turn until they were moving along a dirt track. Branches caressed his outer plating just before the road ended and Optimus transformed, leading the two builders forward.

Optimus had found this place while exploring with Hound on a rare day off. The clearing backed onto the sheer gray face of the mountain, its floor half scrub and half stone. Cupped as it was in a valley, even the tallest of mechs wouldn't be visible to anyone not flying. Secluded as it was and technically part of the Autobots' legally-recognized territory, Optimus had never detected a human presence here. It was even sufficiently far away from human flight paths to provide them with some semblance of privacy from the air.

Besides, he liked it. It was quiet and peaceful. The mountain was old and curled protectively around the clearing, soaring up high enough to feel majestically Cybertronian-scaled. It reminded him, oddly, of home.

Grapple and Hoist examined the clearing with a critical eye. Hoist nodded to himself as he looked around, but Grapple's shoulders slumped.

"Something wrong, Grapple?" Optimus asked.

"No, Prime. I just..." Grapple gestured. "I will do my absolute best, but it will in no way do justice to you or the Rite. Not in five days, with the lack of materials..."

Optimus reached out, laying a hand on the architect's shoulder. "I know that I have not allowed anyone much time to prepare, and for that I apologize, particularly to you."

Grapple blinked up at him. "Prime, sir, no apologies needed!"

"Exactly," Optimus said. "Earth is our home now, as much as Cybertron. One cannot be the other. Please, do not feel the need to recreate the Great Hall." He swept his eyes over the clearing, from the towering mountain above them to the ancient stone beneath their feet to the hawks circling serenely above. "This is Earth. Let it be Earth. We merely want this small part of it to be sacred to Primus. And to us. It does not need to be anything but that." He squeezed Grapple's shoulder lightly. "Chapel. Not grand cathedral."

Grapple nodded slowly. "I understand, Prime."

"Good."

Optimus watched the two builders confer, two linked datapads in their hands. The image, as well as the fact that Grapple and Hoist had been friends and lovers for thousands of vorns even before they came to Earth, made his processor wander, briefly, in wholly inappropriate directions.

The Matrix, he thought, had grown tired of subtlety.

Optimus sighed, pulling his optics away to sweep over the clearing, feeling the wind flowing over his chassis. His plating felt heavy, constricting in a way that it hadn't in a long time. He raised a hand to Grapple and Hoist, turning to transform and leave them to their task, when Hoist called his name. Optimus turned back. The datapads were gone and the two builders now focused on him.

Hoist's voice was amused as he laid a hand on Optimus' forearm. "We ARE old enough to remember what the days before a ritual are like for the Prime."

"Though we are not, of course, high enough rank to even be offering," Grapple hurried to add, "we wondered if perhaps you might...?" His hand weaved uncertainly in the air before his EM field brushed Optimus' tentatively, warm and willing and slightly awed.

Optimus chuckled ruefully. "That obvious, am I?"

Hoist's field joined his friend's, the two of them moving with the ease of long familiarity as they stepped closer, their joined energies tickling against Optimus' sensors in a delicious caress. "Only now that we know to look."

Grapple tilted his head as he looked up at Optimus. "It's just an offer, sir. You look a bit...stressed."

Hoist snorted a laugh, "Is that what they call it on Earth? On Cybertron, we called it being in dire need of a good frag."

Grapple frowned at him, but Optimus just laughed and reached for both of them. His field pulsed in welcome and his sensors tingled as he knelt, slowly, to make them more of a height. Grapple grumbled something at that, but Optimus' focus was on Hoist, who had retracted his facemask and was grinning. Hoist stepped close eagerly, hands cupping Optimus' face as he brought their helms together. Optimus shivered at the buzz of Hoist's happy field, then again at the gentle press of his lips against his own, the stroke of skilled fingers down his neck and over his shoulders. His spark pounded, the charge rising embarrassingly fast. He drew a stuttering ventilation, saying as much, and Hoist chuckled. "Whatever you need, Prime. We're here for you. Just take whatever you need."

Optimus' groan almost covered the snick of his valve cover sliding back. "...please..."

"Mmm," Hoist murmured, against Optimus' neck. "If I might make a suggestion?" The fingers of one hand traced down Optimus' chest, down to his waist and farther, until they traced the rim of Optimus' valve. At the same time the fingers of the other tapped against Optimus' thoracic interface ports.

_YES,_echoed through Optimus' field, his knees widening their stance, his port covers retracting eagerly. His ventilations gasped as Grapple's nearly-forgotten presence slid into place at his back, the second EM field throbbing with Grapple's excited sparkpulse.

"I've got you," Grapple murmured in Optimus' audial. "Lean back. I have you."

"I...ah!...certainly hope so," Optimus said, leaning back into Grapple's solid bulk to give Hoist an even better angle. The medic took it, his plugs snapping into place with a groan of satisfaction. Optimus granted him access and moaned as Hoist's cheerful desire burst in his processor, then moaned again as Hoist slid sensor-laden fingers into the wet heat of his valve. Optimus arched, overwhelmed by the sensations of being stretched, being filled, as well as the unaccountably erotic level of sensory data Hoist was sharing. "I...ah!...Hoist...your hands...!"

Hoist chuckled as he added another finger, optics dimming behind his visor in pleasure.

Grapple's hands settled on Optimus' waist, his voice staticky with lust. "Medic's hands. Most sensor-dense place on him. I can overload him sometimes just by VENTILATING on them hard."

And THAT image did not help Optimus' control at ALL. The metal of his fingers creaked as he dug them into the ground. "Hoist...quickly..."

Hoist pulled back to look Optimus in the face again, his smile blissed out. "Just tell me what you need, Optimus."

Optimus arched, language failing him as his valve spiraled down hard on Hoist's fingers. "More. Hard. Quickly."

Hoist groaned assent, shuffling closer to get the best angle before giving Optimus just what he'd asked for. Optimus choked on a staticked scream as Hoist's last few fingers slid inside, their size difference making his hand just perfect to stretch Optimus' valve like a mech twice his size. The doubled feedback from their hardline connection made it torturously good, and when Hoist began moving slowly, then in the hard, demanding rhythm Optimus' frame craved, it got even better, the medic's fingers flicking out to tap and stroke and scrape every sensor cluster, every node, every slick inch of his wonderfully stretched valve until Optimus' roar of pleasure shook the stone beneath him.

Hoist, knocked offline by the force of the Prime's shared overload, rebooted slowly and withdrew his hand and plugs even slower still. Optimus, still gasping to cool his overheated frame, caught a collarstrut and pulled the medic in for a long, appreciative kiss, their fields fuzzy with satisfaction. Optimus didn't linger too long, though, getting his hands under him so he could turn to his other, very patient partner.

Grapple's overheated frame shook with suppressed want, his own valve cover open and slick, and Optimus didn't make him wait, pressing him back gently. Optimus' spike extended with barely a thought, and Grapple spread his legs wide. "Please."

Optimus smiled, leaning his helm down to kiss Grapple's lips before moving to suck on the sensory nubs crowning his head. He pressed his hips forward, slowly, his spark and the Matrix both throbbing hard at Grapple's ecstatic cries as he took in Optimus' spike inch by inch. When he was fully seated, Optimus paused, ventilating hard, struggling to control his own charge long enough to build Grapple's own.

"Just let go, Optimus," Hoist murmured, crawling around them to get at Grapple's back, hoisting him up cheerfully until his partner was lying back against him much as Optimus had been cradled against Grapple. Hoist smiled down at Grapple's own almost painfully contorted face, hand stroking over Grapple's cheek. "He's holding back for you, too. Aren't you?"

Grapple only moaned, optics flickering as he turned his head, taking one of Hoist's fingers into his mouth. Sucking, Optimus realized with a bolt of sheer lust, the very digits that had been in Optimus' own valve and probably still tasted of his lubricants.

Grapple tilted his head just enough to look up at Optimus without losing his prize, his optics dark, his valve clutching hard at Optimus' spike.

Optimus' own optics shuttered as he let go, losing himself in the tight slick heat of Grapple's frame, the heady pulse of his field, and the utterly wanton SOUNDS he made as Optimus drove hard into him, driving the charge higher and higher until all three of them overloaded and fell to the ground in a happy pile of utterly contented Autobot.

Next to Optimus' racing spark, the Matrix purred.

* * *

><p>Perched high on the cliff above, watchful optics observed the unsuspecting Autobots. Once the Prime and the builders moved on to more...personal activities, Laserbeak took the opportunity to report in.<p>

::Laserbeak: report.::

Laserbeak sent Soundwave a burst of his recent findings. Soundwave was pleased at the unexpected interception of the Prime's conversation, and Laserbeak preened slightly. He enjoyed being able to give more information than he'd been asked for, especially for the wordless wave of pride and affection it earned him.

::Resume observation of Autobots. Removal to Ark at your discretion.::

Laserbeak sent an acknowledgment and resumed his watch as Prime and the builders came together, laughing, fields flaring. An odd grouping, but then Laserbeak felt he had a good appreciation of odd pairings. He settled against the cliff face, circuits warming pleasantly.

* * *

><p>Back on the Nemesis, Soundwave relayed Laserbeak's findings to Megatron. He watched his lord's reaction closely from behind his visor. There was little reaction to observe: merely a narrowing of optics and a thoughtful tap of fingers on the arm of his throne.<p>

Soundwave chose to take that as a good sign. He continued. "More information available. Importance: ...unclear. Unusually personal in nature."

"Unusually personal? Oh, do tell," Megatron said, smirking.

"Prime's interfacing habits: altered. Increased interface drive: observed. New interface partners: present."

Megatron's optics narrowed again, the tapping slowing. "Really...how very..._interesting_."

Ever since Lord Megatron had informed him of the contents of his and Prime's communique, Soundwave had been very careful to have no opinion on the holding or not holding of the Rite. The possible Decepticon reactions were clear to him. Equally as clear was the fact that Lord Megatron had not yet chosen one.

Soundwave thus had no opinion on the issue. None at all. No matter what he and his cassettes might murmur to each other on their downshift.

Lord Megatron's palm slapped down on the arm of his chair as he straightened. "Summon Starscream." His slow smile was not entirely pleasant. "We have some..._planning_ to do."


	3. Visions and Forgiveness

_PAIRINGS: Optimus Prime/Ratchet (sorta), Primus/Optimus Prime (sorta)_

_WARNINGS (for this section): inadvertent tactile overload, stripping down to the protoform/undressing, religious thought and visionquesting, (very) ecstatic prayer._

* * *

><p>The remaining days to the ritual went quickly.<p>

The Decepticons were quiet. There was only one incident-a raid on a natural gas storage facility-but even that was atypical. Soundwave, Starscream, and a trine of seekers flew in under cover of night, set the humans' security cameras to loop, and quickly condensed as much energon as they could subspace. When a human guard caught a glimpse of them and raised the alarm, they melted away as silently as they'd come without a shot fired.

"Weird," Ironhide offered, when they found out.

"Technically keeping to the ceasefire," Prowl observed.

"Luring us into a false sense of security," Red Alert muttered.

"Their fuel supplies were pretty low, last we knew. Maybe they're fueling up for the occasion," Jazz suggested with a grin.

Ratchet, who was halfway through his class schedule of frame-based "Ritual Prep That Won't Frag Off Ratchet" demonstrations, snorted a laugh but added "Remind everyone to come in fully fueled so they're not the inevitable idiots who drop into stasis halfway through" to his to-do list.

Optimus just smiled behind his facemask.

Later that day, he and his acolytes visited the ritual site for a final inspection. Grapple and Hoist had outdone themselves. The clearing was transformed, the bare ground replaced by newly-cut and precisely level paving stones made from the mountain's foot itself. Decorative patterns of shape and color were worked into the design, reminiscent of the tiling in Iacon's destroyed Hall of the Primes. At the center of the plaza, cut from the same stone, was a square dais, accessed on each of its sides by four low (by Cybertronian standards) steps. Each step was etched with sacred ecclesiastical glyphs of virtue: strength, wisdom, courage, compassion, selflessness... The top of the dais was even more heavily decorated. Different colors of stone spiraled into a central starburst, the mosaic textured densely with hand-etched glyphs.

The entire structure was summons and praise and thanksgiving, a Cybertronian prayer carved in Earthen stone. Optimus stood on the dais, at the center of a hymn in solid form, new-carved and bleeding the devotion of the mechs who had labored over it ceaselessly for more than one hundred Earth hours straight.

Behind him, Grapple and Hoist shifted nervously on the steps at his silence. "Prime?" Grapple finally ventured, his dusty frame hunched slightly as if waiting for rejection.

Optimus, temporarily bereft of language, pulled the two of them bodily up onto the dais and proceeded to show them just how much their Prime approved of their dedication. The builders, tired but overjoyed, lasted only for two rounds of their Prime's appreciation before falling into exhausted recharge.

Optimus, the charge still crawling under his plating, barely had time to take a steadying ventilation before his acolytes were there. Mirage's mouth descended upon his, hands stroking and soothing overheated plating, plugs sliding into achingly empty ports while Jazz slid between Optimus' spread thighs, his spike sliding into the Prime's dripping valve like a key in a lock. Jazz leaned in to nudge his way to Optimus' mouth while Mirage shuddered, his presence broadcasting pleasure over Optimus' entire sensor net. Jazz whispered against Optimus' lips, "We've got you, Prime. Let it go. Take what you need."

Optimus groaned, tension fleeing at the feel of _connection_, his spark stuttering between contentment and a vast, nameless _want_ that even Mirage's talented processor, even Jazz's clever mouth and smooth, deep strokes could not sate. Even as he arched, even as he fell into the seventh processor-whiting overload of the day, Optimus was almost painfully aware, down to his struts, that something was missing.

* * *

><p>The day of the ritual dawned beautifully crisp and clear. Autobots went about their business as usual: patrolling, monitor duty, etc, cultivating an atmosphere of barely-contained excitement as the day turned. Red Alert moved about like a mech possessed, double and triple-checking every detail of his security plan, from the guard rotation assignments to the Ark's automated defenses. The Dinobots, who were much too young to participate in the ritual, were to be left under the care of Huffer and Gears, who were gladly staying behind to guard the Ark. Optimus Prime praised the two pessimistic minibots for their dedication but specifically reminded them that Ironhide and Trailbreaker would spell them the next day to give them a chance to join the Rite.<p>

The Dinobots grumped that the minibots were no fun. Wheeljack told them to be good anyway, guard the Ark, listen to Gears and Huffer, and he'd tell them all the stories they wanted when he got back.

In the middle of the afternoon, Optimus, Ratchet, Jazz, and Mirage transformed and drove away from the Ark, heading into the mountains to the ritual site.

Hoist and Grapple had built, as well as the plaza and dais, a simple preparation shelter among the trees at the edge of the clearing. It was there that the Prime settled, spark thrumming, as he stretched out eagerly under Ratchet's servos.

The shedding of weapons and armor was both a symbolic and a practical gesture. Symbolic for the Prime in that he was offering himself both to Primus and to the people, becoming a tool of the divine, given to others and holding nothing back. Symbolic for the ritual-goers as a sign of respect and devotion, abandoning the trappings of war before entering Primus' presence. Practical in that it was much easier to pleasure everyone involved when sensors were bare, the pliable metal of protoform within reach of determined fingers, glossae, servos, and whatever else the participants wished to bring into play.

The removal of so much outer plating, of course, could be a major undertaking requiring a medic's careful attentions. Much of it was not built to be easily removable, and Ratchet had insisted that the crew could make do with what they or a helpful friend could reach. For Prime, though, he set to work loosening connectors and lifting away plating that had been in place for thousands of vorn. The process was long and excruciating for reasons that had nothing to do with pain.

In the past few days Optimus had found concentrating increasingly difficult. He had, at first, put it down to his own dormant liturgical programs activating. They had always heated his circuits pleasantly, and on Cybertron such had been expected. Easing the rising tension was part of the acolytes' duty. However, Optimus had found himself leaning upon Jazz and Mirage's attentions to what seemed to him an excessive degree. His spark had throbbed constantly, and his interfacing equipment had not been much better. Eventually, as even his acolytes hadn't been able to ease the ache, he'd been forced to admit that the Matrix was (yet again) making a point.

He could only hope-pray, really-that the spark and frame his own were aching for actually showed up. Otherwise, he was fairly certain that he would be driven to a highly inadvisable trip to the Nemesis to find them. Until then, though, he could only balance on the blade's edge of pleasure as well as he could.

Until Ratchet began taking his plating off, baring sensors to touch and moving air.

The barest inadvertant touch to his protoform tipped him over, and all Optimus could do was cut his vocalizer and lock his joints to keep from disturbing the medic's work as overload spilled over him in a crackle of crawling blue charge.

Ratchet gasped, catching the sparking edges of it, and froze. "Was that-"

"It's normal," Mirage said, kneeling serene and unsurprised at Optimus' feet. "He is very sensitive."

Optimus slowly got himself under control enough to nod to Ratchet.

Ratchet huffed in amusement. "I'll try to make this quick, then." He continued, doing just that with a gentleness that was almost a TEASE. It did help Optimus deal with the increased sensitivity, though, as the heavy itch of plating was lifted away from shoulders, chest, torso. His helm was lightened one small plate at a time, his facemask removed. First one arm, then the other was lightened, the armor there coming off in sections like a human removing clothes. Legs followed suit, and he felt as if he was shedding lead weights.

When Ratchet was finished, Optimus' armor was stacked neatly against one wall. He rose, stretching and rotating his joints to check mobility under Ratchet's watchful optic. He felt light enough for the teasing Earth wind to blow him away. It tickled over his sensors.

Optimus pulled in a deep ventilation, inner protoform plating that was the last, barest defense over internal systems flaring fully in a luxurious stretch. The sensation carried memories of many rites like these, many days of pleasure and joy and fulfillment. He waded through them to check his chronometer and with one last steadying ventilation nodded to Mirage and Jazz. They nodded and rose, following Ratchet out of the shelter and leaving him alone for the last stage of preparation.

The origins of the Rite of Prima's Blessing were lost to history, but not to a Bearer of the Matrix. Prima, the second bearer of the Matrix of Leadership, had been a slave, a gladiator forced to fight and kill for the amusement of his Quintesson masters. The senseless violence had worn on the mech's spark, as had the terrible conditions he and the rest of his race faced. Through the Matrix, he had sought Primus, who had given him a blissful vision of hope, love, and unity. Moved to share that vision with his people, Prima had done his best to ease their suffering, giving them whatever comfort and pleasure his frame could provide and freely sharing his own noble, indomitable spark. Though he had not lived to see the revolution, his selfless example, the glimpse of Primus' love he'd shared, and his senseless death were all rallying points, uniting the slaves as they rose against and overthrew their oppressors. Every Prime since, on the orbital anniversary of Prima's death, held the Rite in Prima's honor, communing with Primus as Prima had and then spreading his blessing among the people by sharing frame and spark.

The Rite traditionally began with prayer, the Prime connecting to Primus not through the mediator of the Matrix but through the sheer devotion of his spark. It was submission, invocation, confession...and Optimus trembled at the prospect.

The thoughtforms came easily: processing threads aligned to devote themselves to meditation on the very virtues that were carved into the dais steps outside. Much as it did with humans, the concentration allowed him to corral his processor, finding and terminating stray threads and subroutines. Slowly, his queue cleared. His thoughts focused, methodically shedding assumptions, irrationalities, fears, doubts, and worries. The more he contemplated it, the more time, then space became irrelevant concepts. He existed here, now, and all that mattered was the present. The future, then the past, peeled away from his spark and processor.

Optimus focused on the hum of his spark, the particular subatomic resonance it sang as it spun and pulsed in his chest. After awhile he could see how his frame was irrelevant, how everything he was was contained in the Primus-given spark in his chest and all physical being was a mere shell. Sensors, chronometer, status logs, even his connection to the Matrix were all left behind as, with a painless twist of consciousness, Optimus fell inward and found his deity waiting for him.

In that timeless place there was no material form, no sight or sound or other sensory information. Only pure knowledge. Absolute truth. There, with no excuses, reasons, complications, he was faced with true self awareness, and his entire being keened in sorrow.

He had corrupted the Primal coding that had been given to him, waged war upon his own Lord Protector, maintained a war of attrition for countless vorn out of the belief that his cause was just while mechs died by the billions... His arrogance and pride had helped extend this war, when hard compromise might have ended it. He had brought that same senseless war to other peoples and maintained it still on a planet not his own, risking billions more innocent lives. He had turned away from his ecclesiastical functions, cutting off Primus' children from their religion and the bulk of their unifying traditions. Instead of the life of gentle, firm leadership and communion with Primus that had been his fate, he had taken up arms and armor, forging himself into a warrior who had killed or directed the killing of countless of his own subjects. And in his cowardice and his fear that his and Megatron's blasphemy, the horrific war they fought, would make Primus forsake him, forsake them all, he had resisted the call of prayer, turning from Primus in fear and shame, until the very Matrix itself had forced his hand.

The spark that was Optimus trembled as something that was infinitely more powerful than himself examined these sins and a million others. As a sense of dissonance and wrongness grew with every remembered life lost. As that power turned to him, not with judgment but with sadness and regret for a beautiful race and a promising future, for billions of lives shattered and darkened by genocide and civil war.

Optimus' very being wept. _I am sorry. I am so sorry. My people...I am so sorry..._

That gentle, irresistable force refocused his attention, pulling him back from the contemplation of his faults and failures and instead nudging him toward virtues and victories. He had fought to the best of his abilities to defend the weak and protect the innocent. He had granted mercy to those both worthy and unworthy, sometimes at the risk of his own life. His optimism and eternal hope had brought hundreds of mechs back from the downward spiral of hatred and violence and despair. He had ruled wisely, surrounding himself with mechs from various cultures and castes and encouraged them to speak their minds, to help keep his decisions just and balanced. He had led by example, through hard work, devotion, and selflessness, giving tirelessly of himself again and again, without end. He had reached out to his Lord Protector over and over, risking his own life to give his people hope. His spark, battered and scarred as it was, was still that of a Prime: spinning with compassion, love, and a true desire for peace.

And yet he'd failed, Optimus insisted. If he'd had a frame, he would have knelt. He would have bowed low in supplication, in entreaty, in agony, in penance. These were his people. His responsibility. His failure. His spark cried out in pain, helplessly reaching for reconciliation, for aid, for peace... 

_Help me. Help us. Please. Please..._

Warmth spilled over him like the blessing it was. Love poured into his spark. Love, forgiveness, reassurance, and the hot desire for connection. It swept him up and up and up, his spark's resonance shifting higher and higher as divine energy filled him, leaving no space for shame or fear or doubt. Wrapped in that perfect love, he recognized but did not worry about the shift in his own coding, the slight, deft changes to his systems, so reminiscent of the transformation that had turned Orion Pax into Optimus Prime. This change, though, did not hurt. It felt _right_, like ill-fitting plating shed, like a wound that had suddenly stopped hurting. He slid back into his frame seamlessly, his sensors still half-divine, overlaying over sight and sound the strut-deep thrum of oh...oh so many sparks outside in need of healing.

One more stroke of energy into his spark, and Optimus cried out in pleasure and praise, his very spark resonating not so much with words as the knowledge of words...

_There is still time, my creation. Go. Share. All will be well._

Spark singing, Optimus rose and went to meet his people.


	4. The Acolytes

_PAIRINGS: Mirage/Optimus, Jazz/Optimus, and Primus/everyone_

_WARNINGS (for this section): sticky sex, divine intervention._

* * *

><p>The Autobots gathered in the plaza were a shifting mass of hope and anxiety. They all felt vulnerable and vaguely silly unarmed and half-unplated as they were. Some were all but unrecognizable, having taken off entire sections of plating, wheels, spoilers, and kibble. Some felt blind, having laid aside augmented visors and specialized sonar and radar arrays. Some felt exposed, faceplates and facemasks removed to bare mouths and expressions for the first time in vorns. Some felt guilty and hypocritical, having long ago decided that Primus had turned away from all of them. Some felt ashamed that they were not as excited as the others, sure that they were missing something. Some watched and waited for an attack from above, praying that the Decepticons didn't show up. Some-a very quiet few-prayed that they would.<p>

All shivered at the feel of the mountain wind playing over newly-exposed struts and protoform. All waited for their Prime to emerge. And at the appointed hour, all gasped at the wave of energy that preceded Optimus as he walked out of the staging shelter and climbed the dais.

He was beautiful in ways that went beyond the physical and slid into the mystical. His plating removed, he was smaller, the width of chest and shoulders lessened, limbs slimmed but still powerful. The base layer of his chromonanites still lay over struts and protoform, but his colors were muted, the boundaries less rigid. Combined with the occasional visible licks of charge that arced between and under his plating and the brightness of his spark, the soft colors made him look like he was glowing. The thickness of his helm had been lightened, emphasizing his audials and making his optics look larger. Those optics were no longer Autobot blue, instead glowing a holy, incandescent white. Looking into those optics, feeling the blessed resonance pouring off him like a second sun, every spark down to the most nervous calmed, steadied, warmed, as if cradled by a great hand.

The Prime raised his hands, and his acolytes approached.

One acolyte was outwardly serene as he knelt before the Prime, familiar with this ritual and graceful in his piety. Inside, however, he was conflicted between opposing emotions: thankfulness that such a holy rite was being performed again, after so many vorns of war...and sadness tinged with an unacknowledged anger that one of the holiest rituals in the Cybertronian calendar had to be held on a backwater organic planet, all but in the dirt.

Mirage raised his face at the Prime's touch, looked up into those plasma-white optics, all colors and none, and found the rift in his spark eased, his feelings and desires acknowledged and accepted, his anger met with understanding, his sorrow with care, his pride with love. He shuttered his optics, surprised and overwhelmed, and hands stroked over his helm, tracing over his vents and sliding down to his bare shoulder struts. The warm rush of data from newly-exposed sensors made him moan, and then there were lips on his own, arms around him, and an incomprehensibly powerful field enfolding him, inviting him to explore deeper. Mirage's spark pulsed with desire, with need, with yearnings that had nothing to do with his buzzing interface equipment. The Prime pulled him down, gently, and Mirage went, his spike sliding into the waiting valve not so much in obedience as worship.

Large hands caressed him, soothing and tender as if it was Mirage accepting another, Mirage needing reassurance. The care in that gesture, the wave of utter acceptance and love breaking against his spark like the ocean upon the shore, undid him.

For the first time in vorns, Mirage let go, his spark reaching out and finding everything it needed offered back to him, until the sweet, pleasurable movements of his body were superfluous, Primus' blessing settling on him, in him, like the sunlight against his plating.

Mirage lost himself in the ecstasy of the Prime's offering. It was like coming home.

The other acolyte was nervous. The sight and feel of a holy Prime, ripe with energy and half-ethereal was new and intimidating, yet invigorating and exciting to him. The acolyte was built to be cunning and adaptable, but the gravity of this, the POWER, rocked him to his core. He had not expected this presence, this field that was so much more than Optimus alone.

Jazz's belief in a benevolent creator-god, if he'd ever had one, had long since been pushed aside to let him perform his function and all the others that war had pushed upon him. And honestly, how could he respect a god that demanded reverence then abandoned them like a careless creator? As he watched (and watched over) the Prime and his fellow acolyte, as the very air of the plaza crackled with one overload and then another, the watching acolyte could feel, against all laws of common sense and physics, the pistol he'd deliberately left in his subspace.

He'd known it would be blasphemy when he left it there. But he'd known with the optic of a lieutenant, bodyguard, and assassin that, should any Decepticons show up bent on harming the Prime, the acolytes would be in the best position to defend him.

And Jazz never trusted in gods to do what he could do himself.

Still, as Mirage rose, optics white, his field alight, and Primus' own avatar turned to look at Jazz, the saboteur couldn't help but feel ashamed. As if he'd blown off...well, something important.

The Prime held out a hand to him, and Jazz went, helm bowed.

For a spec ops mech, a profession built on NOT being seen, the sense of examination as Prime's field washed over his own was at first acutely uncomfortable. It prickled against his sensors, the spark-stuttering power behind it older, more ancient than Prime, older than the Matrix, exactly as old as Cybertron. It flowed down to his very spark, slipping under every mask, every lie he'd ever told himself, further than any lover had ever gone or he'd ever dared to look. He trembled at the vulnerability (and with no little confusion as this seemed excessive based on what Mirage had briefed him to expect) but clamped down on the instinct to pull away, to protect the wound. As ever, he moved forward into the challenge, running reverent hands over thin plating and pressing his lips over the spark whose light spilled out into the growing twilight, unable to be contained in a mere mortal frame.

Prime pulled him down gently, guiding him into position and then merely waiting, a smile on those rarely-seen lips. Jazz leaned down to kiss them helplessly as he pressed forward, his eager spike sinking into the slick valve with a shock of connection that was entirely different than the interfacing marathon of the past few days.

It was like being unlocked. Not the cracking of being hacked or the breaking of an interrogation, but the joyful relief of OPENING, of being seen and known and understood. Every flaw, every sin (even the weapon he'd not been able to set aside) laid bare and examined and found acceptable. It was a thousandfold amplification of Optimus appointing him-a spy, assassin, and an ex-Decepticon to boot-third in command. This, as that, Jazz accepted for the very same, long-buried, spark-deep reason: the desire to be part of a greater, brighter whole.

Jazz laughed joyously as warm hands stroked charged sparks over his plating, as warm lips pressed gently against the unfamiliar vulnerability of bared optics. The Prime's spark flared, and Jazz's followed suit, energy dancing and twining in a rolling upwards spiral that washed away everything but the desire-the NEED-to be one. One frame. One spark. One PURPOSE.

_Oh,_ Jazz thought, understanding dawning just as overload arced between them, as something just beyond his awareness slid into his systems. _OH._

The blessing settled in Jazz's spark, delight and contentment spilling over into his field. He raised his head, opened optics as pure white as Prime's, as Mirage's, just in time to sense the roar of flight engines.

He rose as Prime rose, the three of them watching, waiting, as the Decepticons landed.


	5. Revelations

_Thank you so much to everyone who's commented and encouraged. I hope that you continue to enjoy the direction this goes! There's a lot of not!sex this chapter, and a lot of Megatron characterization that I hope you all enjoy. Please remember that this is an AU canonsmush of G1 and movieverse, so there's not going to be total agreement with any existing canon._

WARNINGS for this chapter: continued public sex, ritual sex, religious themes, sticky sex, possessiveness, visionquesting, and all around cracky goodness.

* * *

><p>It was not, despite Megatron's sneering suggestion, the entirety of the Decepticon army. Shockwave and the Decepticons' Cybertronian Air Guard were conspicuously absent. Nearly everyone else that the Autobots had ever seen on Earth, though-the high command, the seekers, the Constructicons, even the Insecticons-were present. Several Decepticons that the Autobots hadn't realized were on Earth were present also, though Astrotrain, his interstellar engines shaking the surrounding forest, was nearly unrecognizable without his thick shielding.<p>

Their guests certainly had taken the ritual seriously. They were just as naked as the gathered Autobots that scrambled out of their way as they settled in the north end of the plaza. The seekers themselves were, as a group, easiest to recognize by the broad expanse of their wings, though their helms, chests, and limbs had been lightened and the twilight made it difficult to make out their colors. Others left the Autobots whispering in speculation. It took them awhile to identify the fair-faced, broad-chested carrier as a visor- and facemask-less Soundwave. Without visors and facemasks and most of their kibble, the Constructicons were an undifferentiated blur of light green and pale violet plating. Rumble and Frenzy, restless but staying near Soundwave's feet as if tethered there, were nearly identical. And the mech leading the Decepticons...well. The youngest of the mechs stared in confusion and not a little awe.

Without his fusion cannon, without his helmet, without his armor, but with the underlying cranial panels spread wide and proud in the traditional corona of the Lord High Protector, Megatron looked nothing like himself. Or rather, the older Autobots murmured to the younger, he looked as he had before the war, when he had stood at Optimus Prime's side on Cybertron, in the Senate, at rites such as these. His protoform gleamed, the dying sunlight accentuating the strength in hydraulics and secondary power plants, energon lines crawling thick through the twist of internals, the shine of untouched metal interrupted many times with the duller sheen of welds and patches, scars illustrating a million battles proudly displayed.

As the last Decepticon arrived and the roar of flight engines faded to echoes against the surrounding mountains, the valley filled with expectant tension. It pulsed, almost but not quite in resonance with the spark-thrumming hum coming from the Prime's dais.

The tension was almost thick enough to combust as Megatron, bold and confident as ever, approached the dais.

The blessed resonance was impossible to fake, impossible to ignore. Prime shone like a beacon with it, and it called to Megatron on frequencies he'd long ago resolved to ignore.

It was damnably distracting.

It had hundreds of thousands of vorn since he'd seen Optimus ritually prepared and filled with the light of Primus. Armor set aside, struts and protoform bared, charge crawling lazily from plate to plate, sparklight pulsing teasingly from between flared plates... The sight was utterly erotic, and his control was not aided by the images Laserbeak had transmitted as they flew in: Prime writhing under his pet Noble and then his spec ops head, crying out in pleasure, charge and sparklight flaring.

Megatron took firm hold of himself. This was not about his lust. This was about taking every bit of ground Prime would foolishly give away.

He set his foot on the first step, climbing. "It has obviously been too long, Prime, if you've forgotten the proper order of worship." In the silence of the valley, his voice rumbled like thunder.

Prime waited for him, serene, his field, under the-Primus, the _power_-shimmering lightly with familiar humor. "You were late."

Of course he had been. He'd not been about to dignify the ritual with the Lord High Protector's presence if Primus had not blessed it. Had Prime walked out with nothing more sacred than good intentions in his field, Megatron had wanted the opportunity to destroy him.

"I am here now." Megatron reached the top of the dais, stone solid under his feet.

Prime's field flared with something annoyingly close to triumph, but Megatron ignored it to watch the Prime step closer to him, well within threat range, close enough to feel the swell of his spark through the morass the blessing had made of his field.

Frag it all to Cybertron and back, but Prime felt good. Millions of years of hate and he still felt like-

_my other half_

-the best pleasurebot when he put his mind to it.

"Yes. You are here now. Welcome." That heady field stroked outward, enticing, encouraging, offering, and Megatron hesitated just long enough to make it clear to all involved (and all were watching, he knew, from the smallest cassette to the most annoying of his seekers to Prime's white-eyed acolytes kneeling at the edges of the dais, watching him like the spec ops agents they were) that he was doing this of his own will, on his own terms.

He had barely lifted his arms when Prime slid into his hands, into his field, and Megatron's fingers were on him as if magnetized there, sliding across bared seams in a pattern he'd never forgotten, a sweep of up-back-down that was patterned into his kinetic memory. He would be long dead and his frame would still remember how to hit that long, arcing line of sensors that made Prime shudder and moan. It would remember the exact angle and strength of grip needed to ease Prime to the-

_berth_

-ground, the exact cant of hips needed to allow him to pull Prime into his lap, to line up valve with achingly eager spike, to bracket an arm behind Prime so that he could-scrap and SPARKS-

"I miss this." Prime groaned, sliding down. "I miss YOU."

Megatron growled, surging up, Optimus' valve, as always, stretching and hugging him just so, as if made for him. The cry that accompanied it, the clutch of hands against bared plating, was familiar. Utterly, terribly familiar. Megatron's spark, scarred and skeptical as it was, could not lie. He remembered this more than he should, the memory a lash of heat across his processor. He wanted this, as much as he hated to admit it. The shape and weight of Optimus' frame was burned into his sensor arrays, a ghost of lust and satisfaction he'd never been able to exorcise. No other lover had ever been as compatible in as many ways. Even in their last, furious time as Prime and Lord Protector, when their meeting had been more fight than coupling, the pleasure, bitter as it had been, had been white-hot.

This time was no different. Their frames fell effortlessly into eons-old patterns of thrust and arch, caught in a feedback loop that was like raw voltage to Megatron's neural net. His focus narrowed to the tight heat of Optimus' valve, the frantic beat of his spark, the whirr of ventilation struggling to cool his overheated frame, the SOUNDS he made, that smooth deep voice staticked with abandon and rising charge.

"Is this what you needed, Optimus?" Megatron hissed. "These last few days, when you could barely string a complete sentence together, all but begging your acolytes to 'face you every two joors?" He lifted Prime so that he could pull back, all the way out just to hear the great Optimus Prime cry out in protest and then in pleasure as he slammed back in. "Is it?"

"Yes! Yes..."

"No one could satisfy you, could they?"

"No...Primus..."

"Primus himself couldn't have satisfied you," Megatron growled, weight shifting to topple them, ritual positioning the DAMNED, to pin Optimus down with a screech of metal against stone, his spike buried deep. "You are MINE, and your frame has NEVER forgotten it, has it?"

"No." That frame shivered, and didn't THAT feel delightful translated through the Prime's slick valve. Prime's hand groped up, finding the arch of Megatron's hip and holding. His optics opened slowly, glowing like teasing stars in the dark Earth night. "Speaking from experience, my Lord High Protector?" He rolled his hips, lifting them both, getting enough friction to ramp the charge up just that little bit more, until sparks arced between them, plasma-bright.

Megatron's only response was another growl. After that last time in Iacon, he had never let himself touch Optimus in anything other than combat. He had never approved of the mingling of work with pleasure. It muddied one's priorities. PRIME muddied Megatron's priorities, like a code patch that dropped straight to his interface subroutines. Besides, 'facing him was not conducive to convincing the Lord High Protector programming that Prime was an enemy. Megatron had made a point of giving the Autobot leader as few chances to distract him as possible, knowing that to allow himself the indulgence would break his hard-won discipline, scatter his wits, and lower his defenses.

Like it was doing right now. Starscream could be right behind him with an energon blade and a grin and Megatron would NOT CARE. The thought shot a needle of ice through the heated charge.

This is a mistake, some distant, unaddled instinct warned. A perfectly-baited trap.

No, no, logic replied. Even Prime would not sully a sacred rite for mere political gain.

The aphrodisiac of the blessing, the feel of Prime's submission wrapped tight and hot and wet around his spike, his own lust, all converged on his circuits with pinpoint accuracy. Charge arced through him as it hadn't in vorns, his polarity meeting its opposite mate, his spark spinning and pulsing and as overload hit, that small part of his processor observed snidely "PRIME is no more in charge of this than you are."

Megatron froze, but it was too late. Optimus' frame arched in pleasure, unarmored hands clutching hard at his armstruts, valve clutching with exquisite pressure, field flaring and wrapping Megatron's spark in heat and pleasure and something that was so much more dangerous, more INTENT than mere blessing.

_Slag and smelt me,_ Megatron thought resignedly. Then overload was sweeping him up like the hand of Primus it was.

Primus' presence was always a shock to the systems, but Megatron bore it well, holding straight and proud through the divine examination. He waited, righteous but...wary.

Images of Optimus, Cybertron, mechs long gone, lost to war and time, floated across his consciousness. Memories, full and detailed as the day they were recorded, some he'd not looked at in more vorn than he could remember, their pain or pleasure too much, too distracting. Watching rank after rank of his warriors die, his spark burning with rage. A sparkling playing in a nameless plaza in Iacon, laughing in the light of a sun long gone cold and dead. Millions of vorn of music and art, of architecture piercing the skies in graceful spires. The sound of Iacon, of Kaon, of Praxis, Vos, living cities filled with the hum and clank and deep-throated roar of billions of mechs.

And then...Cybertron as he'd last seen it: cold. Dead. A tomb for living and dead alike.

"I will rebuild," Megatron murmured. "We will be strong and prosperous again, I swear it by my own spark."

_Your road is paved with corpses, my creation._

"They resisted me!" Anger flaring, he shoved aside the image of Optimus, begging him to listen, to wait, to please see sense, to- No. NO. "He ABANDONED me! His people were fighting and dying for ignorance and senseless pride, and he did NOTHING. Weak and naive, listening to petty advisors and powermongers instead of his own Lord High Protector! Allowing corruption and greed to eat at our very core, to gut us! The Council was a pack of thieves such as the universe has never known, crushing mechs under their feet so that they might hold power for themselves. They were vile and despicable and destroyed more mechs than I ever have, and I AM NOT SORRY!"

_You are right._

The agreement hit him like a slap to the spark.

_But they are dead._

"Their legacy lives on!"

_No. Your Prime lives on. Join with him._

"No." Reflexive recoil, rebellion running spark-deep.

_You trusted in me, once._

"Oh, I trusted in you..." His rage, which had always been too large for his frame, now felt like a plasma cloud: thick, choking, burning, yet also, for the first time, something untethered from him. Something that he might leave behind. He clutched at it, stubbornly. "I trusted in you, and the Council ordered my soldiers to slaughter! I trusted in you and pushed for change! I trusted in you and fought for the weak and oppressed! I trusted in you and lost everything! My people, my mate, my home, my planet...all gone!"

_Not gone. Damaged. Scarred. In pain. But this is a crossroads, my creation. Will you fight for them again? Will you reclaim them? Or will you give up? Will you be a leader...or will you be an executioner? Will you rule with bitterness and anger, or with wisdom and hope?_

His spark trembled, feeling rage slip from his grasp, moving through, away, no matter how he tried to hold onto it. He keened in loss, floating anchorless in the gravityless nothing that was worse than deep space. Here, stripped bare, he could see every justification, every manipulation, every lie, every twisting blow to his own spark as he slashed and burned and forged himself awry and into something new and frightening. The reality of it was crushing, and for the first time in a long time he felt...he wished...

_Anger and bitterness...or wisdom and hope?_

"I...I have lost all my hope." The words weren't even spoken, just felt, KNOWN, a concrete fact like a cage of Cybertronium, hurtling toward oblivion.

_Then let me give you more, my creation._

"I..." Resistance. It was hard to think. Hard to separate his will from the great will around him, powerful and intimate. There was another, lesser will there, also: close, support and care and ridiculously unconditional love wrapped around him like an embrace. He batted it away irritably. "Let me THINK, damn you."

Laughter, not unkind, and a backing away.

He groped for his bearings, for his purpose, and found himself kneeling amongst the shells of discarded ideals. Unity. Service. Protection. Strength. Righteousness. Anger. Power. Control. Conquest. Victory. Here, disconnected from them, from the trappings that surrounded them, the webs that snarled and snared, Megatron could examine them clearly. He dismissed the first few with barely a look. He had moved beyond them. Never again would he be the naive public servant, the blind follower. Neither could he return to thinking that pointless power could be an end unto itself. It and the control it fed were useless without a purpose.

He reached forward, taking hold of conquest and victory. He weighed them in his hands, felt the heft of them, familiar but for one thing he had never noticed. They were hollow: shells of higher purpose, a naive extension of his desire to rule, to prove himself RIGHT. Here, he could see the cracks, the pits, how underneath that desire was something else, the end long-buried under the layers of justified means.

He abandoned conquest, brushed away the cracked shell of victory, searching...and realized he was back at the beginning, his progression not a line but a circle, starting with Hope.

_No,_ he thought. _I have moved beyond such things. I am a pragmatist. A realist. I do not..._

Images, locked away long ago and half-forgotten, rose from the ashes beneath his feet. Optimus and he, young and naive, lying together in the quiet nights, sated and content, murmuring of problems and plans, patterns and promise. His own energon-stained hands, after the fateful battle at Ganex IV, when he'd truly seen the problems with the system he served, when his first instinct had been to go to Optimus, because surely there was no problem they couldn't defeat together.

Hands covered his, pulling his gaze up to Autobot-blue optics. "I could not help you then. I was young, naive, weak...all the things you accused me of being. I was afraid of what you offered. I was afraid to pull back from the safety of tradition. I was afraid, and you were angry, and that only made me more afraid, and then angry. At you. At myself. I was the diplomat, the negotiator, and I could not convince my mate and best friend to listen to me. I felt weak, and that made me angry." Optimus paused, considering. "There was a tipping point. Before it fell out of our control. Where I might have contacted you...discussed...compromised. When you might have listened to me. I did not see it until it was past. You are right. I abandoned you, as surely as you abandoned me. I am more sorry for that than I can express."

Something shifted around them. Megatron knew Optimus' words were true. Here, they had moved far beyond the capacity to lie. His words dropped into Megatron's spark like drops of light, warming instead of consuming.

Optimus knelt with him, their optics level. "I don't want to make that mistake again. Surely we can make better choices. Surely we've gained some wisdom in all of this. Some strength. We are not who we were. We are not shackled by our youth, the Council, the past. We can begin again. If we can just stop fighting each other. I don't want to fight you anymore." He opened his hands, pulling Megatron's own hands apart to reveal the light sitting in his palms, coalescing into images of Cybertron, rebuilding. Of sparklings...so many sparklings, running and playing and flying with not a care in the world. Of the Constructicons and Prime's builders arguing, pointing, adjusting, their holo blueprints buried under a mess of revisions. Of Decepticons and Autobots swarming over a half-built structure that might have been reminiscent of the Hall of Primus. Of he and Prime, walking together, their hands full of datapads. Of them both, laughing.

"I want this." Prime curled forward, down leaning his helm into Megatron's hands, in want, in pain, in supplication. "I want this."

_What do you want, my creation?_

The universe paused, turning on that one question.

_What do I want?_

He wanted that Cybertron also, Megatron knew. Peace. Prosperity. Unity. Strength. But how to achieve it? After so long, after so much pain and death, how to get from here to there? He'd thought that he could forge a path...thought he'd seen the road...but now...

Now.

Inside his spark, something untwisted, straightening ever so slowly. It felt like energon finally flowing through a crimped line, like a dislocated joint set true, like a sparkling unfolding. Like promise.

Megatron cupped Prime's chin, lifting his face up. "There is another way," he said, surprised at the truth of it.

Optimus smiled. "Yes. There is."

The universe shattered.


	6. Reconciliation

_PAIRINGS: Starscream/Optimus/Megatron, Thundercracker/Jazz, Thundercracker/others_

WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER:  
><span>Consent issues:<span> One commenter once said they wished there was a warning on this section for noncon. I had wavered on whether or not to put it on there to begin with, but then decided not to. I'll lay it out: Primus wants everyone to get along. Some folks at this shindig might not trust that or want that going in. Does use of persistent offering of peace and prosperity as well as a religiously-driven aphrodisiac to break down resistance rooted in trust issues count as noncon? I'll let you decide, but if you say "yes" and don't like that thing, you might want to skip this part.  
><span>Nonsexual warnings:<span> Mention of previous psychological torture.  
><span>Sexual warnings:<span> sticky, plug 'n play, orgy, multiple partners.

* * *

><p>The breathtaking pulse of <em>power<em> spread outward from the dais like a shockwave, driving a few of the more sensitive mechs to their knees, their electromagnetic sensors spinning wildly as the resonance of the Prime's energy changed. Still strong, still high and sweet with the tenor of the caring divine but now deeper, heavier, more weighty. It shuddered along every sensor like the rumble of contained thunder wrapped in velvet, power tempered by compassion, strength guided by love.

To the older mechs, those who had been in Iacon oh so long ago, who had attended the Prime and Lord High Protector, that combined frequency was familiar. Ratchet and Ironhide leaned on each other, their fields nearly incomprehensible with joy and hope. When the younger Autobots looked at them in half-confusion, Ironhide picked up Cliffjumper (who looked as if he was halfway uncertain as to whether this change reflected an attack on the Prime) and swung him around, laughing, answering with glyphs heavy in ecclesiastical meaning: balanced power, strength-in-unity, and the paired forms of the glyphs for Prime and Lord High Protector that were never used separately.

Jazz and Mirage, at some unseen signal, stood and made their way down opposite sides of the dais, moving into the crowd, where they were met with enthusiasm and not a little awe. Ratchet and Ironhide hadn't even waited, precipitating a knot of bodies all on their own.

The Decepticon side of the plaza was a bit more subdued. The Constructicons conferred excitedly. Astrotrain shifted on his feet. Soundwave's cassettes shivered, expressions rapt and sensors flared. Starscream was inscrutable, his trinemates at his side, even as the Prime and Lord Protector separated, turned...and waited for him.

The core of the Rite was to share Primus' blessing with all, but tradition had a hand in the order. The Lord High Protector first, then the acolytes, then the next-highest-ranking mechs attending. These had usually been the Emirates or any of the old municipal inherited titles. Which, many slowly realized and informed their neighbors, was the mech holding the old, old title of Air Lord of Vos.

* * *

><p>Starscream stepped forward, resistance clear in every cable and strut, fighting his frame's insistence on relaxing into the pulses of power that crashed in waves off the dais.<p>

Someone had to keep their head. Someone had to be the pragmatist since MIGHTY Lord Megatron had obviously LOST HIS MIND.

Starscream knew this ritual. He'd attended several before he'd given up most of his title's benefits to join the Academy. He knew what a blessed Prime felt like and knew what he felt like when he was properly synced with his Lord High Protector. He had been there after, had sensed how Megatron and Prime's energies had shifted over the vorn as they fought the bond between them, stretching it to the breaking point.

Now? Now they both resonated through the valley in a two-note harmony that was unmistakable, as if the intervening millions of years had never happened.

This had NOT been in the plan.

This...whatever it was...was unacceptable. Ridiculous. What did Megatron think he was doing, all but handing himself over to the Prime? Continuing the ritual, taking his rightful part in it, Starscream knew, would only compound the stupidity, drawing them all further into the idiocy.

But Starscream also knew the spark-spinning resonance of a true blessing. Primus, the slagger, was HERE. What could Starscream do? Refuse? Yes, refusing a blessing from your deity was BOUND to be a wise decision. Not to mention that Thundercracker appeared to have (as the humans said), drank the Kool-Aid and was looking at him with that little knowing smirk that meant that if he ran he wasn't going to get far.

Refuse and snub a god, losing the respect of half of the army. Accept and draw them all even further into this web of insanity.

Starscream seethed as he climbed the dais.

The first touch of that inner field, of that well of acceptance, to his own was painful. Not because it didn't feel good, but because it DID. Starscream had concluded long ago that he would make a better ruler than either of the two nitwits who had torn their society apart, and yet he had had to fight claw and talon for every rank, every victory, every scrap of recognition.

Nothing, he knew to the center of his struts, was free. Nothing was unconditional. Everything had to be earned, bought, scraped for, or stolen. The blessed resonance sliding ease and comfort and pleasure across his sensors was a lie. He had done nothing to earn it and it thus must be worthless, empty, meaningless.

The fact that his own spark responded to it, instinctively translating the Prime's blessing as pleasant and relaxing, made it all the worse. His own reactions stolen from him by instinct and base coding, he raged internally at the loss of control, at the situation, at Primus himself. ::What have you done?:: he hissed at the two smug leaders. ::I don't care what farce you have going here, or what tricks you've got up your valve to turn my glorious leader here into your berthpet. I do not want you, and I refuse to submit to you!::

It was a lie, of course, the not wanting part. Only a dead mech would have not wanted them. Starscream was-they all were-coded to respond to that resonance, instincts primed (hah!) to respond to blessing frequencies with unthinking acceptance. Submission to the divine.

A divine that had been silent for millions of years. A divine that now, after millions of years of destruction and struggle and pain, NOW reared its head, reaching out its meddling servos, having the godly BEARINGS to demand their obedience after millenia of abandonment.

Starscream wasn't certain who his remarks were aimed toward, the mechs in front of him or the light shining from their optics.

Starscream stopped, one foot on the top of the dais. He reset his sensor net, hacking through his own code ruthlessly to turn off his EMF sensors. Whatever happened, he would have space to THINK. The sudden lack of EM fields was like being dropped into frigid water. He was alone, as if floating in deepest space.

It was, as usual, painfully isolating.

And he still couldn't think, logic scattered and torn from this unexpected turn of events. This hadn't been the plan. The plan had been to ruin the Autobots' day, perhaps destroy them, and lacking that spike Prime and mock the entire proceedings for the farce that they'd expected them to be. This...an actual Primus-blessed ritual...this had not been in the plan.

All one's schemes and plans tended to go awry when a god became involved. Not the least because the EMF sensors were not the only access point. There was a force, incalculable, unstoppable, surrounding his spark, humming with emotions and memories and images and FUTURES that Starscream refused to examine. No. No, it did not matter. It was a lie. It WAS. It could not be that easy. It was a LIE!

...it had to be. Because otherwise, what had they been fighting for?

Megatron stepped forward, just out of arm's reach, and Starscream, looking in those white optics, knew fear. Because what stood before him was not just Megatron. Not merely the Decepticon warlord. This was, Starscream knew, spark-deep, the Lord High Protector, chosen and blessed by Primus, speaking words Starscream hadn't heard in vorns. "We need you."

"I will not submit," Starscream hissed, even as his spark thrummed like a struck crystal.

"No," Megatron said, approval and amusement entwined in his voice. "Never. Luckily for the universe at large, that's not what's happening here, Starscream."

"Not submit," Prime said, and Starscream felt him step closer like one would mark an approaching supernova, if one were made of desire and fulfillment and a love and acceptance that Starscream could not understand, could not believe in, but which he wanted with a sharp, painful NEED.

Prime held out his hands, and even without EM sensors, he was a wash of warmth against Starscream's spark, an indefinable resonance that shivered over his bared protoform.

Prime stopped, hands outstretched, an offering.

"Not submit. JOIN."

* * *

><p>The valley was filled with a tense, waiting silence at Prime's offer, at Starscream's hesitation. Thundercracker found his hands clenched, wings tight to his back as if expecting a blow. Here, in these circumstances, at just the right angle to see the suspicion and fear on his trine leader's face, Thundercracker wasn't sure if he trusted Starscream or not.<p>

Starscream's optics offlining as he slowly stepped into Prime's field was a minor miracle. The almost pained moan as Prime's hands settled at his waist was a revelation. The choked cry of pleasure as the Lord High Protector closed in, smirk as evil as ever, hands stroking over his Air Commander's wings, was a vision.

And the slick sounds of fragging-in-progress from the Autobots' side of the field were giving Thundercracker ideas.

Before he could turn to trip Skywarp, though, black hands and a field like a warm updraft settled against his chest. Thundercracker shivered, not entirely in pleasure, as he found himself looking down into the white optics of the head of Autobot spec ops.

This was, given the situation, less alarming than it usually would be. Especially since the Autobot was thrumming with the high, sweet resonance of blessing. Thundercracker was no youngling. He remembered Rites long ago, remembered being on the outskirts of the crowd, of laughing and groping his friends, and of there suddenly being another pair of hands and a frame-a nameless stocky blue grounder that he never would have looked at twice anywhere else-entwined with them, white optics gleaming. The memory of the next quarter-joor, of the blessed reaching for, caressing, connecting to, taking each of them in joyful turn was one Thundercracker still brought out on cold and lonely nights.

The memory of the blessing itself sliding into his systems, of that peace and love and _presence_ filling him with contentment and a tiny sliver of deity-scale perspective? Thundercracker held that even closer.

Of course, he also had the memories of being captured. Command Trine, yes, high-level prisoner, yes, which just meant that the interrogation hadn't left any marks. Confinement, intermittent "power failures" in his cell, striking unerringly at the instinctive seeker fear of being trapped in small, dark places. And that was before they'd started putting the hallucinogens in his energon. Jazz's had been the face he saw when the lights came on, always friendly, always reasonable, always with a meaningless apology for the "poor accomodations", and always, ALWAYS asking questions. Watching, assessing the armor, planning the next blow.

Luckily Thundercracker had usually been exchanged or rescued before Jazz could do much more than soften him up, and of course, Thundercracker and Skywarp had taken it out of Jazz's plating whenever he'd been in the Decepticon brig. However, it did not make having the saboteur pressed up against his plating a particularly comfortable experience, no matter WHAT color his optics were.

Thundercracker's sensors, though, disagreed. They thought that this was a FABULOUS idea.

Evidently so did his traitorous wingmate (the other one), as Skywarp, upon turning and seeing the state of things, merely grinned and took out Thundercracker's legs with a calculated jab of foot to the curve of his knee. Seeker and saboteur fell to the ground, Thundercracker twisting on instinct so he spared his wings as well as come out on top.

Jazz was not perturbed by being pinned by an ambivalent seeker one bit, evidently. By the time they had stopped falling, Jazz had his legs wrapped around Thundercracker's waist and his hands dug into the seeker's shoulder vents, clever fingers pinging the temperature sensors along the thin inner walls. Thundercracker hissed, trying to resist, and Jazz rebutted with a roll of his hips that was, the seeker was fairly sure, ILLEGAL in several galaxies.

"What do you say? Let bygones be bygones?" Jazz purred in Thundercracker's audial, and the tone of his voice, the tenor of his field, the press of his hips all cracked Thundercracker's resolve, but what undid him was the wetness of lubricants sliding over Thundercracker's panel and the realization that Jazz, generally ranked as one of the scariest and sexiest of the Autobots, had sauntered over to him with his _interface panel wide open_.

Absolutely nothing in the universe, up to and including the return of Unicron, would have kept Thundercracker's spike behind his panel at that point.

_Frag it,_ Thundercracker thought, his own field swamped and syncing helplessly with the heat of the blessed mech's frank, honest LUST. Jazz's hips tilted up and onto Thundercracker's thrust and the slide into slick, tight heat felt better than anything Thundercracker had felt in longer than he cared to remember. His hands gripped the Autobot's hips, lifting the bot's light frame effortlessly and slamming home again, harder than he'd meant, in the search for friction. Jazz's moan was not of pain, though, and he gave Thundercracker just what he wanted, his valve clenching and holding, his hands clawing at Thundercracker's shoulders to pull himself closer. "Yes! Frag, c'mon, give it to me hard, yes, just like that..."

Thundercracker would have laughed at the constant litany of impassioned filth that streamed from the Autobot's mouth if it hadn't been so fragging HOT and if he hadn't been busy fragging said Autobot into the ground. So busy, in fact, that he only gradually became aware that Skywarp was pinging him and had been for Primus only knew how long.

::TC TC TC look look LOOK AT STAR OR YOU WILL FRAGGING MISS IT.::

Thundercracker lifted his head from the muzzy haze of lust that hung about him and Jazz, optics skating irritatedly to Skywarp, who was kneeling on the ground not far away, knees spread, one hand on his spike, the other thrusting fingers into his valve while his optics were riveted on the dais. Thundercracker shuddered, biting back a moan as Jazz's valve clenched impossibly tight, the Autobot writhing under him like a turbocat in heat, moans nothing but incoherent WANT now as he overloaded hard. When he could think again, Thundercracker lifted his optics higher, to the dais, to find his wing leader.

His wing leader, who was sandwiched between the Prime and the Lord High Protector, spike buried in Prime's valve as his own was busily taken by Megatron. Megatron was crouched over Starscream like some great predator, hips slamming forward in a rhythm that had Starscream living up to his name. As Thundercracker watched, Megatron latched onto Starscream's neck, biting with a force that sent Starscream into an overload that spiraled into the ultrasonic range and sent every organic nonsentient for miles fleeing. The Decepticon leader's hands, though, were on Prime's, pinning them to the dais, holding Prime down as Megatron drove his Air Commander's hips hard into the Prime's frame.

Thundercracker had never seen anything hotter in his entire life, and all it took was the rake of Jazz's fingers and the barest flutter of his valve walls to send Thundercracker into an overload that started in his spike, caught his field like a plasmafire, and sent his spark resonating, his entire world nothing but pleasure.

When he came to, Skywarp's familiar field was pressed against his side and Jazz was laughing at something the teleporter had said. Skywarp's field pulsed _want-hunger-greed-need_ at both of them indiscriminately, and Thundercracker pulled him in, rolling all three of them in a laughing spill of limbs that expanded as others joined them, hands sliding over their plating from all sides. A glossa delved into Thundercracker's valve, sending him into another arching overload. A plug was pressed into his fingers, hot and tingling with charge. Thundercracker jammed it home in his aching port, and from there the entire world devolved into slick heat and hard spikes and the unbearable, delicious lust and pleasure and warmth branching across his circuits.

_Yes,_ was his only thought for a long time, echoed in fields and processors both Decepticon and Autobot.

_YES._


	7. Demonstration

_Warnings for this section (in addition to story warnings): voyeurism, bit of dirty talk!_

Ironhide couldn't stop grinning. He was sure he looked like an idiot, but well, at least he and Ratchet matched.

The field that Prime and Megatron were putting off was amazing, rich, FAMILIAR. THOSE resonances couldn't be faked. Ironhide had never thought he'd feel them again: the sparkdeep heat and power of a bonded ruling dyad, sparks spinning in time, frames...well.

Prime and Megatron had always made a pretty picture at these sorts of things. Either of them alone, stripped bare and ritualistic, were fuel for fantasies. The two of them together, entwined, was enough to pop a mech's plates. Watching the two of them subdue by sheer presence and make a seeker sandwich out of the mouthy Decepticon Air Commander?

THAT was more than any mech could be expected to handle.

Ironhide's arms tightened around Ratchet's torso, holding the medic tight against his chest. Ratchet knelt over his lap, back to Ironhide's windshield. Ironhide's hands held Ratchet steady as he rose and fell, impaling himself eagerly on Ironhide's spike. Their optics were riveted on the dais, sensors flung wide to catch every clank and moan as Megatron and Prime turned Starscream into a shuddering, overwhelmed puddle of seeker.

"Frag they make a pretty picture," Ironhide murmured in Ratchet's audial. "You remember that? Bein' right where Screamer is?" HE remembered that. A ritual long, long ago, when Ratchet had been the Prime's medic and Ironhide his bodyguard. His processor held memories of Ratchet in a lot of erotic positions, but the one of him on all fours, taking Prime's valve and Megatron's spike at once was one of Ironhide's favorites.

Ratchet groaned, his valve tightening down into a deliriously good clench. "Yes...frag..."

Ironhide rumbled in agreement. "Wanna see you up there. Get all the way into Prime, feel him overload while we watch Megatron spike you..."

Ratchet's head fell back, his vocalizer muted but his overload unmistakable as charge crawled lazily from his plating to Ironhide's. Ironhide's circuits sang as Ratchet's valve convulsed around him, squeezing impossibly tight. Ironhide didn't fight it, loosing his own charge with enough force to tip Ratchet over again with an undignified but incredibly hot moan.

"W...wait," Sideswipe said, from somewhere behind Ironhide's shoulder. "You get to frag THEM?"

"Oh yeah," Ironhide answered, easing his and Ratchet's weight down, supporting the medic until he gathered his processor. "What, didn't you hear? Everyone's been talkin' 'bout it."

"The orgy, yeah, but we thought...y'know, only the acolytes and...and nobles and such got to actually frag Prime..."

"Pit, no," Ironhide chuckled, circuits humming pleasantly at the friction as Ratchet rose slowly off his spike. "Anyone can walk up there, take their turn with either or both of them. Nobles'd go first, but with Mirage and Starscream out of the way, field's wide open. S'the whole point of the thing."

The sun was a mere hint of light on the horizon, the night having fallen in a blue veil over the valley. The dark was no match for Cybertronian optics, though, and the Earth's lone satellite glowed bright and nearly-full in the sky. Red and blue light flickered from optics all around, and here and there a bright spark or snake of charge crawling over heated plating.

Ratchet managed to find his struts and get them under him. Ironhide watched Sunstreaker watch the medic with a refreshing mix of confusion and lust. That look was echoed in most of the other faces around them, the younglings apparently fascinated by the show so much closer than the leaders on the dais. Ironhide huffed a pleased vent of air, watching hands roam to the whirr of cooling fans. ::Still got it,:: he smirked to Ratchet.

The medic grinned back over his shoulder, not even bothering to close his panel as he stood. Ironhide watched as at least six pairs of optics tracked Ratchet's bared valve rather than his face. Ratchet's EM field was loose and happy, sated and hungry all at once. Ironhide watched the medic eye his admirers right back, optics taking in Bumblebee's quick hands, Hound's warm smile, the broad expanse of Skyfire's wings, even Cliffjumper's coiled energy. Every mech, Ratchet had said once, had their attractive points. Ironhide tended to agree. His own optics tracked up to the dais, where Starscream's ultrasonic keen was drowned in Megatron's subsonic rumble and Prime's cry of joy. All three of them peaked again, charge crawling over them like foxfire leaping from Prime's and Megatron's hands to skitter across Starscream's flared and sparking wings. The peak was contagious, rolling out over the gathering and leaving groans and cries of pleasure from Autobots and Decepticons alike in its wake.

When Starscream rose a breem later, smirk in place but frame loose and relaxed, his optics were pure white.

This, Ironhide knew in the back of his processor that was not busy watching the Lord Protector's hand slide slowly back into the Prime's slick valve, was going to change everything.

It was a giddy, unbelievably good thought.

Still, even after that show, no one had made a move toward the dais. Closest was Sunstreaker, whose hands were all over his twin but whose optics were fixed on the dais with slightly uncertain but obvious hunger.

Well, Pit, they'd never get the party started at this rate.

Ironhide cocked an optic at Ratchet. "Show the kids how it's done?

Ratchet grinned, hauling Ironhide up to his feet. "Always."

* * *

><p>Ratchet had seen many things in his lifetime. Many things that younger mechs would believe impossible. Peace, for instance. A Cybertron bright and bustling with life. Megatron accepting the Senate's decrees with proper respect or presenting his case before them and winning concessions. Megatron and Optimus, both drowned to the vents on high grade, giggling and necking in a dark corner like younglings. Megatron and Optimus like this, ritually stripped, optics glowing with holy blessing, frames saturated with charge in front of an enthralled crowd.<p>

So it wasn't that Ratchet didn't believe it was possible. He just didn't think it was LIKELY. And as un-fakable as the resonance changes were, as unlikely as it was that a blessed Prime and the god he embodied could be fooled by a Decepticon ruse, Ratchet just preferred to know for himself.

The gathered mechs parted before his and Ironhide's advance like water, blue and red optics turning to them. A knot of white, also, surrounding Mirage. Ratchet had lost sight of Jazz, but if Mirage was currently stroking every Autobot he could reach, then Ratchet guessed Jazz was somewhere out of sight, making some very happy Decepticons.

They passed one of them on the way to the dais. Starscream looked as if he was going to say something snarky (blessed or no, he was still Starscream). Ratchet pre-empted him by reaching up, yanking the seeker's head down by a vent, and kissing him long and hard. Buried in Starscream's surprised but rapidly warming response, Ratchet missed most everyone else's reaction, but he thought he heard a collective intake, a chuckle from Ironhide, and a few groans from somewhere in the crowd.

Starscream's hands fluttered around Ratchet's frame like uncertain birds that hadn't found a good spot to land. Ratchet pulled back, smirking,. "Air Lord," he said, his glyphs perfectly proper and respectful as he turned away and set his feet one by one on the glyphs for strength, wisdom, courage, compassion, selflessness...

Optimus' field was a wash of pride-approval-welcome. It felt like the finest oil bath, that same sense of ease and comfort seeping into every seam, filling every joint, soaking away the corrosion of pain and despair. Ratchet had forgotten how good that could feel, and he lifted his face in acceptance, his spark reaching for more of the same. "My Lord Prime."

"My friends, welcome," Optimus replied, his hands familiar in their strength if not their shape as they gripped Ratchet's shoulders. His field was sweet, wide open and broadcasting sparkdeep care and contented desire, heady with the scent of ozone and lubricants.

Ratchet hadn't meant to get distracted, but he was only a mech, and he couldn't have fought that invitation even if he'd wanted to.

Optimus' mouth met his halfway, the Prime bending down to reach him, pliant even though he towered over the medic. Ratchet thrust his glossa out, up, in, and groaned at the warm welcome he found there. Medic-sensitive fingers pressed ultrasound scanning pulses along strut and protoform, and Optimus' vocalizer bled to static for a long moment at the sensation, his frame swaying.

"Now, now, lock your joints," Ratchet chided mildly. "Wouldn't want to have to stop the exam, hmmm?"

Optimus' chuckle did not quite obscure the subtle tension of him following his medic's orders, ventilation shuddering.

"Good." Ratchet moved his fingers down, slowly, half-scan, half-caress. Optimus was doing fine, systems aroused but at peak performance, frame undamaged, energon levels steady. He knew that this would be the case through the whole ritual. Only afterwards would Optimus feel fatigue. Until then, he was powered by something deeper, more elementary than the energon in his tanks. The medic in Ratchet noted all these things, relieved at them.

The mech in him shuddered with want, the sight and sound and _smell_ of a lubricant-slicked, blessed Prime enough to make his circuits crawl with charge. It was beautiful, sacred, unbearably erotic, and Ratchet couldn't help but linger. His hands traced down further, wringing soft sounds of pleasure from Optimus as he pressed the tingle of scans and his own field into sensitive protoform. Chest, sides, torso and further down, under, IN.

Optimus' rumble of pleasure rolled over the valley as Ratchet's fingers slid effortlessly into his valve. Slicked as he was with lubricants, there was next to no friction, warm lubricants sliding into the joints of Ratchet's fingers, dripping down to his wrist. Ratchet caught Optimus' mouth again, free hand bracing Optimus' shoulder as his other thrust three fingers in easily. "Prime," Ratchet breathed, his HUD fritzing with the heat-pressure-friction from medical-grade tactile sensors clutched in such exquisitely tight, slick HEAT. Chemical sensors scrolled components across his HUD, all perfectly as they should be. It made the sensor check, the slow, methodical flicking of sensory clusters, the waking of each with touch and medical frequencies, all the easier. Ratchet started at the rim, tracing his fingers around, then slowly worked his way in.

Optimus' hand tightened on Ratchet's shoulder. "Ratchet...ah!..."

Ratchet hmmed amiably, progressive and ruthless as he spiraled his exam around, testing the valve's stretch, sensors alert for burrs and activated repair nanites that would indicate damage. He found none, but he was thorough anyway. (Can never be too careful, after all.) Their size difference made it such that Ratchet had to push in further to reach the deeper nodes, Optimus' valve taking his entire hand, then his wrist easily as he continued in, satisfied by the response he was getting both from the sensors and their owner. He tilted his head up again, breathing across Optimus' lips, "Anything hurt? Any errors?"

Optimus shook his head, vocalizer clicking as if he was trying to say something but then staticking out in a cry as Ratchet reached one deep node whose position and placement made it oft-neglected by a thrusting spike. Ratchet circled it with one finger, feeding it pressure and heat, and the Prime trembled above him, his hands gripping Ratchet's shoulders more for support now than anything else.

"Good," Ratchet answered, free hand pulsing soothingly over Optimus' cables and coming to rest against the cables and rotors of his neck. Optimus turned into that hand, venting hot against Ratchet's palm before pressing his mouth to it. So long hidden behind his facemask, Ratchet knew, would made the unaccustomed touch a thrill of overamped sensation from long-underused sensors.

Ratchet curled his palm around Optimus' cheek, thumb sliding over Optimus' lips even as the fingers of his other hand crooked, pushed, pressed, and were rewarded with a soft, eloquent groan of increasingly urgent static. The Prime's field was a haze of simmering pleasure, strength and love distilled to a frame that translated connection and unity as pleasure, altruism and service as divinity.

It was an intoxicating thing to have in his oh-so-sensitive hands. Ratchet was fairly sure that Primus would forgive him for enjoying that in a slightly-less-than-professional way. He'd never seemed to have any objections before.

"Very good. Now overload for me," Ratchet murmured, turning his entire hand just SO and nearly forgetting to do the entirely necessary-no-really scan of power levels and load responses as the Prime arched and cried out.

Optimus' overload rolled over Ratchet rather than through, caressing his spark but not pressing. His valve clamped hard around Ratchet's hand, his body swaying and finally being eased to its knees, supported by Ratchet from the front and Ironhide from the back. "Very good," Ratchet said, satisfied on more levels than one.

Optimus chuckled and leaned down again, kissing Ratchet sweetly. ::Be nice, my friend.::

Ratchet didn't need to ask what he meant. That brush of spark had gone two ways. ::When have I ever not been nice?:: Ratchet asked innocently as he retrieved his hand in a final, intimate caress and stood.

Over Optimus' shoulder, Ironhide smirked. ::Don't do anything I wouldn't do, Ratch.::

::Never,:: Ratchet answered.

::Going to give him an energon candy next, _doctor_?:: came on another channel.

::No, but I might give you one, if you're good. It could only improve your disposition.:: Ratchet stole one more kiss from Optimus before turning to his real objective here. He stepped boldly forward, into Megatron's reach. The rich haze of Megatron's field held things that Ratchet hadn't felt in thousands of vorn: the Lord Protector's steely resolve and awesome strength no longer saturated with rage, no longer sharpened by hate. Feeling that eased something deep in Ratchet's spark.

Ratchet's optics were drawn to the map of welds and patches crisscrossing Megatron's frame. Varying ages, varying levels of skill behind the torch, varying severities of the wounds...

Optimus had begun to look like that. The thought made Ratchet's spark contract painfully, then, tentatively, expand again.

The Lord High Protector's instincts were not the Prime's. He was not, strictly, supposed to be a comforting or even COMFORTABLE guardian, and no Cybertronian, Autobot or Decepticon, had thought of him as such in recent memory. Which made the way Megatron's field reacted to that flash of pain and loss all the more amazing. The push of reassurance came blunt and unquestionable, lacking the Prime's finesse but just as instinctive.

Ratchet started a sensor diagnostic in surprise. Megatron just looked slightly pained. ::Are you still here merely to make fun of me, medic?::

::No. Not MERELY to make fun of you,:: Ratchet sent back, stepping close enough to touch. He laid a hand on one long, skillfully-done weld that arced over Megatron's secondary fuel pump and scored deeply into protoform. "I remember this one."

"Wirrix II. It's not pained me since." Megatron's optics brightened at the touch, his field flaring in aggression that was for once not MALICIOUS, merely...possessive. Protective. The light shadow to the dark desire for conquest that it had become. Had been? Ratchet fought to keep his surprise out of his field and must have failed.

Megatron chuckled as he reached out, fingers stroking with surprising deftness over Ratchet's chevron. ::Here to test me, medic?::

The experienced touch over such a sensitive component distracted Ratchet from smirking only slightly. ::Did you expect anything less?::

::Never.:: Megatron's smile turned knowing, one hand tracing down to Ratchet's own. "You always had such TALENTED hands." He pulled one up, licking the remnants of Optimus' lubricants off it without breaking Ratchet's gaze.

Licking and SUCKING. Ratchet's systems, primed and ready and unsure as to why they hadn't overloaded yet, helpfully suggested other parts of his anatomy that could use such attention.

_This is happening,_ Ratchet thought as he stepped forward one final time into Megatron's arms, his head tipped up to receive the kiss that pressed warm and firm to his lips. _This is REAL._ His hands left the welds to trace over more sensitive areas. Though really, Ratchet thought, with all that plating removed, just about anywhere had to be sensitive. Megatron's reaction as he traced over exposed components, fingers following the delicate tracery of sensory circuits, only confirmed his suspicion. Ratchet pressed closer, letting the vibration and hum of his systems wash over every exposed sensor.

Megatron _purred_, pulling Ratchet flush against him so that it vibrated through Ratchet in a strut-melting wave. And his field: still...annoyed, but perfectly benign. Was Megatron that good of a liar? Or was Primus truly with them again?

Wry amusement trickled through his field, as Megatron's hands cupped Ratchet's helm, pulling him into the kiss. ::Go ahead. Look. It's what you're here for, isn't it? It's not as if you or anyone else couldn't kill me right now. Look...:: Megatron's thumb stroked firmly over the linkages of Ratchet's throat. ::...satisfy yourself.:: A click between them, muffled between their frames, illustrated what his glyph choice did not.

Ratchet didn't argue, his own cable extending the inches needed to connect at Megatron's thoracic port.

Handshaking protocols, then...full medical access. Megatron chuckled at his surprise, and Ratchet huffed back, "You're enjoying this way too much."

::Yes,:: Megatron replied, the glyphs unspooling into Ratchet's buffer directly from the hardline. ::Odd, since I had little choice in the matter. Go ahead, look and see what our glorious deity can do.:: The glyphs he used were...conflicted. Annoyed, sarcastic, awed, but more resigned than angry.

Resting his forehelm against Megatron's collar fairing, Ratchet looked.

He breezed through the physical and autonomics scans. Megatron was in as good a shape as Optimus was and likely would be for the remainder of the ritual. Ratchet paged onward, to the processor logs that were his goal.

He knew Megatron's systems. Or HAD known. He had maintained Optimus and Megatron for vorn and knew first-hand what the Lord High Protector coding looked like. Then the war had begun and his access had been only in fits and starts, usually when Megatron had been captured and in need of repair. There had been one time when he'd had to repair a hard crash, when he'd seen what could become of the Lord High Protector code after millenia of perceived betrayal and hate and anger. He'd seen the tearing twists, the failsafes Megatron had unearthed for when the Lord High Protector might be called upon to protect the people from his Prime. He'd seen how Megatron had slotted himself into that role in code as well as rhetoric: a Lord High Protector rebeling against a dangerously unworthy Prime, a Protector of his people struggling in their name. It had been painful to see, terrifying in its sheer dedication to reforging one's very self through pain and rage and will.

Now, Megatron's code laid bare beneath his gaze again, Ratchet could only stare at the perfectly pristine Lord High Protector coding before his virtual eyes. Could only stare at the logs, at the endless lines of revisions, retractions, reversions that had happened within one, impossible nanoklik while Prime and Megatron had stood staring at each other.

::Now you understand.:: Megatron's commentary was wry.

Ratchet stared at the logs again. Impossible. It was IMPOSSIBLE. In that depth. In that timeframe. Without completely fragging the personality matrix itself. ::It...it would have been so easy to...::

::To scrag my personality matrix? To roll my memories back to that time? To make me a blissfully ignorant, perfectly compliant Protector of the Prime? Yes. Yes, it would have been. AND YET...:: Megatron's glyphs were complex: annoyance, outrage, admiration, wry amusement, awe, and the tiniest hint of humility. ::I must admit I wasn't exactly...expecting it. I don't suppose there's a chance of...?::

Ratchet slowly lifted his head, staring up into Megatron's face. The face of a mech who had been as touched by Primus as Prime had been. More, even. ::Of what? Getting your fragged coding BACK? No. No way in the Pit.:: It was even true. Even given the logs, the depth of the changes made them impossible to undo without damaging the neighboring code, even if Ratchet did have a backup of the coding Megatron wanted reinstated.

Ratchet reached up, arms winding around Megatron's neck and pulling him down. "No. You're STUCK with us, Lord High Protector."

Megatron's hydraulics whined as he bent, arms sliding under Ratchet's aft and lifting. He slid his lips along the point of Ratchet's chevron and SUCKED. That and the growl of his response made Ratchet's optics fritz, his vocalizer bleeding to static. ::Make it worth my while, Autobot.::

* * *

><p>Ironhide had been one of the more skeptical of the Autobots about this whole business. Strip down, disarm, and leave the Prime out in the open like some kind of gift to the fragging Decepticons? Uh huh. Sounded like the universe's most terrible plan. Not like Ironhide had much weight to throw when it came to Primely ritual and such, but he'd tried anyway. He'd reasoned and cajoled and begged Prime not to do the ritual at the clearing, but in the end Optimus had just smiled and refused to budge.<p>

So Ironhide had done the only thing he could short of contradicting a direct order from his Prime: he'd joined Red Alert and Prowl in making their perimeter as tight and formidable and VISIBLE to airborne Decepticons as possible, then carefully forgot to empty his subspace of weapons, resolving that any Decepticon that so much as made Prime FROWN was going to get turned into scrapmetal, holy rite or no holy rite.

He wasn't hoping for trouble. He was, in fact, very much hoping for the opposite. He'd just seen enough of this war to know that weaknesses needed to be covered or they got exploited. The fact that the 'Cons had flown in without a twitch of trouble only confirmed that he and the security mechs had done a good enough job.

Ironhide's skepticism had only spiked as Megatron had climbed the dais. He wasn't particularly worried about Megatron. He agreed with Prime there: Megatron was fragged in the processor enough to think he was still Lord High Protector, and he wouldn't disrupt the rite. No, it was Megatron's army of slagging psychopaths that Ironhide was worried about. Granted, Megatron seemed to have left some of the worst crazies at home, but still...there was always Starscream or some other ambitious idiot or just the whole thing cascading into the Pit because someone twitched wrong. Ironhide knew that he wasn't the only one who'd had visions of Prime dead on the dais, the whole valley turned into a killing floor.

And then all that...hadn't happened. Not only had it not happened, but the impossible HAD happened.

Ironhide wasn't a stranger to the impossible. He also wasn't a stranger to the firestorm that was Optimus and Megatron coming together, or that dual-note sparktone and what it meant. But still...like a certain medic he knew, he liked best things he could touch...or things mechs he trusted could touch.

And really, when it came to impossibilities like this, Ironhide liked hardline exams by the most skeptical medic in the universe best. Thus, when Ratchet embraced Megatron, Ironhide relaxed hydraulics he didn't even know he was tensing.

Optimus tipped his helm back, his field pulsing reassurance, and Ironhide's own took it, gratefully. Took it and pulsed back wonder, joy, reverence, and desire. The desire only deepened as Ironhide settled solidly on his knees, Optimus' larger frame kneeling over his lap, leaning back against him. Ironhide was smaller, but he was strong enough that Optimus' weight, especially lacking the better part of his plating, just made Ironhide dearly wish that he'd taken Ratchet up on his offer to strip him down to ritual specs, so he could feel that bare form against his own with no armor or kibble in between.

Ironhide dared, in the smallest corner of his processor, to hope that he'd get another chance.

The angle was awkward, but neither of them cared overmuch as Ironhide stretched up and Optimus leaned down, lips meeting in the middle. Optimus' panel was still open, his valve a wet, inviting heat circling over Ironhide's interface panel. Ironhide groaned. It had been a long time. Too long. His spike was painfully pressurized behind his panel, and he let it free with a groan of relief. Optimus hmmmed with him, hips rising and tilting and descending with an instinctive, knowing grace to take Ironhide in and in and IN, until he had nothing left to give and he pressed his hips up desperately in a futile attempt to give Optimus more.

_Primus,_ Ironhide thought, the word more prayer than it'd been in many, many vorns, and something answered him. Something like the sun that had long since set. That light/heat/hand fell upon his spark and Ironhide welcomed it as easily as Optimus' valve welcomed him.

_Yours,_ Ironhide replied, and didn't even know who he was addressing. _Yours._

A sound from the other side of the dais drew Ironhide's attention, and he looked up just in time to see Ratchet lowering himself onto Megatron's spike. The Lord High Protector had knelt in much the same position as Ironhide was in, his partner held in his lap and...Primus, did Ratchet sound happy to be there. Ironhide's hips jerked instinctively at the demanding SOUND Ratchet made as Megatron's spike slid into him.

Ironhide nudged Optimus' face forward. "Watch. Y'don't want to miss this..."

"This" was Ratchet and Megatron driving each other insane with fingers and glossas. Megatron sucked on Ratchet's fingers while Ratchet's other hand stretched up to rub against the base of the cranial panels spread tall and wide and shivering oh so slightly with the attention. Every now and then one or both of them would stiffen in reaction to some unseen stimulus. Ironhide suspected the cables still linking them. The very idea of Ratchet and their Pitspawn Lord Protector surging pleasure through each others' processors while putting on such a SHOW made Ironhide groan and thrust. Optimus rumbled an answering sound of pleasure and placed two shaking hands on Ironhide's thighs for balance as they started to move.

And watched. Primus, the entire valley watched, and Ironhide could hear the roar of cooling fans from there. Not that he could blame them one scrapping bit. Ratchet was no fragile crystal, and whatever he'd seen in Megatron's helm had made him fearless. He rode Megatron's spike with an eagerness just short of predatory, and Megatron responded to that with all the fierceness Ironhide would have expected. Sparks flew between them, their charges crawling from internal to internal.

Ironhide groaned at the show, hands holding Optimus' hips so he could thrust, long and deep and steady. He let Optimus set the pace and was unsurprised that that pace was the same one Megatron was using to make Ratchet writhe and cry out.

Right until the moment that Megatron's head fell back and, with one final thrust, he stiffened, growling out his overload as it limned both of them in blue-white crackles of charge. Ratchet's cries morphed into curses, clearly annoyed at the Lord Protector's timing and the fact that he'd STOPPED. Megatron just chuckled darkly, hands holding Ratchet's hips down on his lap as he smirked and sent a charge through the cables connecting them that made the metal connectors visibly SPARK. Ratchet cried out, hands scrabbling for Megatron's shoulders, and then Megatron did it again and AGAIN, and Ironhide lost it. The mental image of a Protector-grade battle processor overwhelming a Tower-grade medical computer and SWAMPING it with charge was more than any mech could be expected to take.

Ironhide groaned as Optimus obviously agreed with him, valve clenching hard around his spike, fingers clenched against his thighs as he rode Ironhide's thrusts. Ironhide felt a bit bad, having been so caught up in watching that he hadn't been giving due attention to the Prime writhing in his lap. (Not that Optimus would see it that way, but well wasn't THAT just part of the problem?) Ironhide banked his own charge as much as he could, letting Prime balance in his lap while Ironhide ran his hands over Prime's bared protoform, his servos trailing sparks in their wake.

Prime groaned as Ironhide's fingers found the sensor clusters in his abdomen and traced them one by one, slowly, then slower, harder still. His helm fell back, barely touching Ironhide's shoulder. "I...Ironhide..."_Appreciation-admiration-affection-love..._

"Let it go, Optimus," Ironhide murmured into Prime's audial. _Loyalty._ "Let me take care of ya." _Devotion._ "Let me make it good for ya." _Love._

Optimus cried out as Ironhide's fingers slid down, down, until the components under his fingers were slick with lubricants. The external valve sensors were hot and staticky with use and charge, and Ironhide stroked in a hard circle over all of them, one after the other. Prime's small, helpless sound of pleasure shot heat through Ironhide's frame right down to his spike. He pressed the heel of his hand down, hard, on the ventral sensor cluster as he thrust hard into exquisitely lubed tightness. Prime's backstruts arched, his frame a perfect bow of pleasure, every linkage drawing tight in overload. His valve clamped down hungrily on Ironhide's spike, and Ironhide's optics fritzed to static as the pleasure dragged him under like a riptide. He rode through it, hands clamping Prime to him, pressing tight and as close as he could get, every sensor alive with the thrum of Prime's spark.

When he onlined his optics again, Ironhide nuzzled into Prime's shoulder and could tell his optics were white by their reflection off Prime's protoform.


	8. Stars Align

_Author's Note: Real life has kind of eaten me, so sorry for the slowness. That probably won't change in the near future, so updates'll come as they come. Thanks for your patience, all! :snugs:_

* * *

><p>As he stepped off the dais and into the sea of red and blue optics, Starscream saw him. It was difficult not to. He was the largest Autobot there, after all.<p>

And he was moving with purpose on an intercept course. Dazed and distracted Autobots moved out of his way or stilled so they could be moved around or over. One, the Autobot engineer, looked up and said something as Skyfire passed, and the shuttle replied with a smile, his optics not leaving Starscream, his slow, careful stride unchanging.

Starscream remembered that smile and found himself glad to see it, even if it was not aimed at him, even if it was aimed at Autobots. There had been no time for it, the last time they'd met. There had been little time for anything, last they'd met.

Starscream surrendered to the inevitable, stopping only a few steps away from the dais. He kept his face and field neutral, unsure what to expect. Anger? Betrayal? He deserved those.

But they were not what he got. Instead, Skyfire went to one knee, and his acknowledging glyphs were old, ceremonial, those of a subject approaching the Winglord.

Starscream vented a sigh. From anyone else, after the harsh words and shots fired between them, Starscream would have expected mockery, a prelude to accusations. Skyfire, though, was the least duplicitous mech Starscream had ever known. Starscream found himself unsure if he could still read him, if he could understand such honesty.

"Starscream." Skyfire's glyphs matched his posture. They glittered with honorifics, fit for the Hall of Flight in Vos.

"Skyfire." He kept his own glyphs neutral, an invitation to informality. If they kept to the formal protocol, they'd be at it all cycle. "Something you want?"

"I'd like to talk with you." Skyfire's voice was mild, his gaze the same, and both made Starscream's plating itch with uncertainty. Or was it...no, definitely uncertainty. "We are overdue."

And THAT tone, Starscream knew from experience, was like the voice of Primus himself (having had recent experience with the actual voice of Primus did not diminish the comparison, Starscream thought). For all his mildness, Skyfire could be a stubborn fragger when he wished. It was usually easier to let him say his piece, though with the audience around, Starscream deflected on instinct.

::Is this really the time for such things?:: Starscream asked, switching to comms.

Skyfire's glyphs were lightened slightly with wry amusement. ::At a ritual of reconciliation and reconnection? Yes?::

Starscream vented a sigh of the warm, organic-laced air. There were thoughts flickering through his processor. Thoughts that were much too understanding, much too forgiving to be his own. Starscream clamped down on them with a vengeance. ::This is not the place.::

::You don't wish to talk to me. Why not?::

::That is not true.:: Though it was. Skyfire had always been much, much too perceptive for his own good. Starscream drew himself up. ::I have a part to play here.::

Again that infuriatingly mild smile. "Indeed, you do." He spread his large hands like unfurling wings, his glyphs formal in a way that that smile was not. "I ask for your blessing, my lord."

Of course he did. The idiot. Fool. _Autobot_. ::And if I refuse?::

::You will not.::

::You are so sure? You are a traitor to your Winglord, after all.::

::So you say and we both know to be false.::

Starscream's optics narrowed. ::And now you call me liar?::

Skyfire's own optics were steady. ::We both know that you drove me away, Starscream. I understand that, now. You were trying to protect me.::

That feeling in Starscream's spark, the feeling of a dam rushing open, of a reaction finally falling to its final state, might have been relief. Not that Starscream would admit it. ::Of course I was trying to protect you! Do you know how few dedicated scientists we have left? Megatron would have put you on the front lines simply because of your SIZE! The Autobots at least would keep you SAFE!::

And that, Starscream thought, was why they were having this lovely, traitorous discussion over comms instead of out loud. Once a scientist, always a scientist.

Skyfire started to reach out, then thought better of the movement. He vented a sigh that if Starscream didn't know better he would have labeled "annoyed". ::Did you ever stop to think that I might have liked to decide for myself?::

::You DID decide for yourself! You chose to leave!::

Skyfire's engines dropped into a rumble, his optics flashing with emotion that Starscream would have felt bad for, if he were another mech. ::You PUSHED me to it. I was working off of incomplete data, and you knew it. No one explained to me the extent of the war, nor the sides. No one told me what this planet represented. No one told me that we are a dying race. No one told me that Cybertron is a dead world, Starscream.::

::And that would have made a difference?:: Starscream sneered. ::You can't convince me you would have abandoned science to fight. To kill.:: The very idea was ludicrous. Skyfire was not a warrior and never would be. His spark was too gentle. Too open. Too...

Starscream felt something move, something change...that burst dam settling into a placid lake, something like a memory, and something like the hand of Primus. Starscream railed against it internally (_STOP THAT!_) and got nothing in return but a settling of his spark and a vague sense of amusement.

::It might have,:: Skyfire was saying, his glyphs starting to betray his (rightfully, Starscream admitted) righteous indignation. ::Had someone explained it to me, I might have decided that Megatron's war was just. I might have decided that I had to change with the situation. Presented with two sides, in a war of extinction... I knew none of the Autobots. I knew you. I might have chosen to stay a Decepticon.:: He reached out, one hand hovering a mechanometer in front of Starscream, but not retreating this time. ::To stay with YOU.::

Starscream could not even imagine it. Did not WANT to imagine it. ::Being a Decepticon would have destroyed you.::

Skyfire huffed, his hand dropping. ::Please. I am not that delicate. And you and I both know that no material can truly be created or destroyed.::

::Only transformed into something no longer recognizable,:: Starscream replied, his glyphs more sulky than he would have liked.

Skyfire reached down, oh so carefully. His large hand covered Starscream's shoulder vent, his thumb lying along Starscream's cheek. His glyphs were exasperated, fond, and achingly familiar. ::You are a selfish aft, Starscream. But I forgive you.::

Starscream did not move under that hand. No matter how it sent his sensors firing pleasure at the pressure and heat of it, at the thought of the things those fingers could do, of the things he'd done in and to and with that hand... ::So very generous of you.::

Skyfire leaned down, his bulk, the warmth of his systems so close comfortable rather than intimidating. He pressed his fore helm to Starscream's. ::I know.::

Starscream vented a sigh. "What do you want?" ::Now. What do you want now?::

The air rumbled with Skyfire's chuckle, a quieter version of his great engines taking off. His other knee came down, his weight settling back on his heels until he was fully kneeling. His large hands traced over Starscream's chestplates. Usually buried beneath his cockpit, they were extraordinarily sensitive, something of which Skyfire seemed quite aware. The spark beneath them, swollen and roiling with energies not his own, pulsed in Starscream's core, a wave of pleasure washing outward through his every line. Starscream reached up, steadying himself against those large hands, and Skyfire smiled, leaning in.

Sensitized from the power still pulsing through him, power plant evidently completely oblivious to the three overloads he'd just had, Starscream reached up, his hands framing Skyfire's face simply because they wanted to.

"I want you," Skyfire rumbled against his palms. "I want to feel you tremble in my lap and overload against my fingers. I want to taste your spike. I want to make you scream with pleasure. I want to feel your spark reaching for mine."

Some spectator behind Starscream-it might have been one of the coneheads-moaned. Starscream could not blame him. The very words made Starscream's valve tighten, spark spinning faster from memories of doing just those things. In the Academy. On Cybertron. In the dark of space. And, if he wasn't mistaken, in one of the promised futures that had flashed before his cortex when he'd joined with the Prime.

_You are so very predictable,_ Starscream thought at the spreading warmth in his spark. _Do you really think that this is all it will take to keep me satisfied?_ Whatever answer he might have gotten was buried in the feel of Skyfire raising one of Starscream's hands to his mouth, warm lips closing over digits...sucking...and letting go with a truly unnecessary pop of suction.

"And your blessing, of course, my lord," Skyfire said, piously but with an even more unnecessary grin.

Starscream sighed and stepped forward, between Skyfire's knees, surrendering as he'd surrendered the moment he'd set foot on the dias. "This changes nothing between us," he murmured against Skyfire's chestplates, his field already meshing with Skyfire's like two halves of a whole.

Skyfire merely smiled and pulled him in closer, rumbling with equal parts desire and utterly smug contentment.

iFine,/i Starscream thought at the small sun of happiness in his own chest. iFINE. We will try this your way./i And then the tip of Skyfire's glossa played over his helmvents, and he thought very little for quite awhile.


	9. Binary

Sideswipe looked at his brother and sighed, thinking, _We're going to die. We are going to die, and you are going to get us killed._

He knew that look on Sunstreaker's face. He knew that focused attention. And he saw who it was focused ON.

It was something about the corona of panels around the helm. Or perhaps about all that physical strength bared and displayed so openly.

Nah, it was probably about the helm. Sunstreaker had always had a thing for interesting helm designs.

And it was going to get them KILLED.

Nonetheless, one half of a binary star system that he was, Sideswipe followed as Sunstreaker strode for the dais.

They passed Starscream without a backward glance as he stepped off the bottom step. ...Which was a damn shame, in Sideswipe's opinion. He had IDEAS for his glossa and those wings that he made a note of for later. Supposedly this shindig was to take three days, so who knew...maybe if they didn't all kill each other he'd get a chance to try them out.

Murmurs followed them as the twins mounted the steps. There was probably some kind of order, some tradition or taboo they were breaking, but whatever, like they cared. No one tried to stop them, and Sideswipe picked out more than one murmur of anticipation among the crowd, so it obviously wasn't too important.

Prime looked like a youngling's dream of interfacing, laid bare for all to see and touch. So much plating gone, it was like looking at a different mech, and Sideswipe could only guess at how sensitive Prime was like that. He couldn't resist trailing a hand over hot protoform. Literally hot, too. Sideswipe could feel the Prime's powerful engine ticking away beneath. It made Sideswipe falter and pause with the desire to feel that hum against his lips and glossa as he LICKED it.

Sunstreaker, optics on his prize as always, nudged him on his way past, a flicker of interest toward the Prime not enough to distract him.

Sideswipe's stride faltered, his own optics still following the curve of Prime's protoform, and armor or no, Prime's chuckle was still that all-over, strut-melting rumble. "Welcome."

It was half a word and half a field modulation and half something else that Sideswipe didn't have the sensors to dissect. All he knew was that it felt GOOD, and that when he leaned in to kiss the plating over Prime's spark, when he licked at the thin protoform and groaned at the taste of heated metal and charge, that this was permitted...welcomed. That Prime's arms pulling him close and the glossa twining with his own were eager and uncomplicated.

That Sideswipe wanted to press the Prime down, back, onto the dais, that he wanted to lose himself in the naked protoform before him, wanted to climb into the wet, eager valve open against his side, wanted to make Prime make the sounds that Megatron had wrung from him. That he wanted all that and that such things were POSSIBLE. Probable. Available right then for the asking.

That having such desires was ok. Sideswipe rested his forehelm against Prime's chest, Prime's thumbs tracing soothingly up and down his helmvents, and let himself think, for the first time in a long time, that this, things, EVERYTHING might be ok.

The thought was world-altering. Terrifying. Sideswipe shook with it for a long moment before his spark was wrapped in warmth and reassurance larger than him, larger than Prime. Only then did Sideswipe realize what he was dealing with, and he shook harder-in mortification, in alarm, and in fear.

Prime's arms wrapped around him, holding tight, his engine taking on a soothing croon that set up a shiver in Sideswipe's frame. The low, sweet harmonics wrapped around Sideswipe's rapidly-cycling spark and eased it.

"I didn't think you existed," Sideswipe whispered, face mashed against Prime's chest as if he could hide. As if that or the mere darkness around them could hide him from Primus himself.

_It's all right,_ echoed through his spark. _Sideswipe, my creation, everything will be all right._

Sideswipe, awash and flailing in peace he wasn't sure was real, suddenly rediscovered something he'd long forgotten: that he could hope. And that hope was PAINFUL. His voice was a whisper as naked as Prime's plateless frame. "Promise? Do you PROMISE? I can't...it's not...I can't just HOPE anymore-"

_Look._

"I..."

_Look._

Sideswipe looked, and shapes took form, images pricking themselves to life over his optical sensors. A room, a suite of rooms, clean and comfortable, though details were lost to an odd haze. Himself, moving among them, gathering this and that, passing Sunstreaker with a wave as he painted by a sunny window. Himself, taking to the air, darting to avoid several seekers he didn't recognize. Himself, negotiating something with...was that SHOCKWAVE?...and leaving pleased with himself. Then, again, to the quarters with Sunstreaker and...others. A bright, stylishly orange mech who regaled them with some tale over energon and a green, blocky femme who occasionally looked up from her datapad to shake her head and interject wryly. He watched himself lay a hand on her shoulder, say something with a smile, drop a kiss on her helm...

"What...I don't..."

_Look._

More images, just as peaceful. Sunstreaker on a sparring ground, taking down a red-blue-white femme seeker and then showing, patiently, just how he did it. A Cybertronian skyline, ragged but speckled with tiny weld-flares in the darkness as it was rebuilt. Prime and Megatron on top of another dais, armored this time, answering a question together and apparently, relatively peacefully, disagreeing.

Streetscapes, filled with mecha wearing Decepticon and Autobot sigils and some wearing neither...or both. Many of them Sideswipe couldn't identify.

A club, filled with flashing lights and dancing mecha cheering on a black-and-white performer on the stage.

Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, sitting together on top of a tall building, watching a familiar yellow sun rise.

Sideswipe blinked and found himself still staring at Prime's chest in front of his nose. He looked up, uncertain, a question half-formed in his field and his vocalizer. _Was that real? Will it happen?_

The glyphs that pressed themselves into Sideswipe's field were thick with reassurance. Not a promise, not in the sense he knew it, but both simpler and more complex, rich with acknowledgments of cause and effect and free will. Sideswipe glimpsed, for one terrifying nanoklik, the web of time, the possible events flowing from this ritual, this day, this MOMENT, and understood.

Not a promise, he realized as his optics were drawn up, over, to where his twin had closed to within arm's reach of Megatron. Both of their expressions were predatory, hungry, and the relief that the Sideswipe/Sunstreaker collective might NOT be offlined with extreme prejudice was slowly being drowned in the steady sparkbeat of charge.

Not a promise. An opening. A chance to get behind the combiner and push.

The Prime's field was bright and encouraging next to his own. He leaned forward, kissing Sideswipe's forehelm . It should have made Sideswipe feel like a youngling, and it did...in some ways...but the fact that he couldn't tear his optics from the sight of Sunstreaker's hands reaching in to stroke over scarred protoform went a long way to negate that.

"Later," Sideswipe said, looking back at Prime long enough for a final, greedy kiss before untangling himself.

Prime laughed, the sound rich and warm as his fingers trailed a caress over Sideswipe's retreating plates. "Later," he promised.

Sunstreaker and Megatron were all but circling each other, even as Sunstreaker trailed fingers boldly over one particular scar. "I gave you this one," Sunstreaker said, grinning. Sideswipe could hear the pride in his voice. It wasn't every battle, after all, that they'd managed to work their way close and score a solid hit on the Decepticon leader. Sunstreaker had paid for that strike with a backhand that had cracked his helm and sent him flying off a building, but that was never what he dwelt on when he told the story.

Megatron's helm cocked, as if he had to think about it. "Yes. Polyhex." He reached out, tracing a finger along Sunstreaker's side. "And I gave you this...and this...and-"

"Yeah, yeah," Sunstreaker grumbled but didn't pull away, his hands sliding up, up to Megatron's helmcrests. Typical Sunstreaker tactic: push in where others would back down.

Megatron looked surprised, but Sideswipe, intimately familiar with the odds of the battlefield, could see that it wasn't the type of surprised likely to get a fusion cannon to the face, even if there had been a fusion cannon in attendance.

"It's your own fault", Sideswipe said, moving closer, "teasing Ratchet's hands like that. What're these for, anyway? Would think a Lord Protector wouldn't want sensor suites on top of his helm where anyone could take a shot at 'em." He moved in, exactly opposite Sunstreaker, to bracket Megatron between them. The Decepticon leader turned slightly with the movement, letting Sunstreaker slide around his side to press against his back. Sideswipe grinned at his twin over Megatron's shoulder, running a finger along one shining frond and getting a shiver and a growl in return.

"Secondary communications array," Megatron hissed, hand coming up and back to latch onto the side of Sideswipe's own helm and...do not much but hold him there, Sideswipe couldn't help but notice.

Sideswipe grinned evilly. "I seeee...so if I modified my magclamps like SO and stroked like THIS..."

"So" and "this" (a trick learned long ago from a certain adventurous communications officer) earned him a strangled cry as EM sensors were stroked with frequencies almost but not quite what they were designed to receive.

"Too much?" Sideswipe asked, innocently, doing it again. "Should I stop?"

Megatron GLARED at him, optics flickering as Sunstreaker abandoned the weld he'd been investigating with his glossa in favor of stretching up to lick at a sensor panel. "I don't think he wants us to stop," Sunstreaker said. "I think he's been too busy bein' the Slagmaker for too long, hasn't had time for a good fragging." The frontliner grinned at Sideswipe over Megatron's head before sucking the panel he'd been licking into his mouth.

"You might be right," Sideswipe said, other hand coming up to rub against another panel. "Good thing we showed up, huh? Otherwise he'd just've gone through this whole thing with everyone bein' afraid to give him a proper workout."

"Do NOT discuss me as if I am not here," Megatron growled. His hands came up to circle Sideswipe's waist, and they both froze for a microklik, until it became clear that neither of them was going to do anything rash.

Sideswipe's grin was unrepentant. "Excuse me, Lord Protector, SIR. Afraid to give YOU a proper workout. And really, if you're that cranky after Prime AND Ratchet, that just proves our point." He caught his twin's optics, wordless communication passing between them in expression and spark and shared experience.

Sideswipe moved closer, hands settling on Megatron's shoulders. The two of them bore him down to his knees, as Megatron made it clear that they were only doing so because he allowed it. Sideswipe didn't care, though, his weight settling on the larger mech's thighs. The Decepticon leader's field was aggressive, as usual, but the tone of that aggression had changed. Wary, but not violent. Powerful, but not...something. Not as dark.

Sideswipe basked in that field for a long moment before running a hand down bared and gleaming protoform. Sunstreaker's hands followed, their fingers delving between wires and sliding over primed sensors. That brought them a snap of attention like an electric shock, but it didn't bring ANGER. Or hate or outrage or any of the other emotions Sideswipe would have expected a month ago. He was an expert at dissecting such things and they were...absent.

Instead, the Decepticon leader resonated with something else. Something like what had brushed Sideswipe's spark when he'd touched Prime. Something that felt, against all reason-because this was MEGATRON-GOOD.

It was utterly, stupidly, fraggingly RIDICULOUS, but hey...Sideswipe wasn't about to let Prime and Ratchet have all the fun. After all, how many mechs got to say they'd fragged an utterly naked and helpless Megatron?

Megatron's ventilations hissed as Sunstreaker's hand utterly bypassed his spike to slide further down, back, to roughly caress Megatron's still-covered valve. That brought a hitch of Megatron's hips, his voice a low, growling challenge. "Is that what you want?"

"Want to frag you," Sunstreaker growled back, leaning in against Megatron's back, leaning up to take one of those crest panels between his TEETH. "Want..."

"I know what you want," Megatron said, those white optics fixing on Sideswipe's own, the corner of his mouth quirking even as he reached back, catching Sunstreaker and holding him there. "You want a place to belong. A place like your brother here, has." Megatron cupped his free hand over Sideswipe's cheek. "Blessed already, Sideswipe? I didn't even see an overload."

"What can I say, I'm just that good," Sideswipe said, turning his head to take blunt, scarred fingers into his mouth.

"Mmm, I certainly hope so," Megatron said, his hand sliding down to Sideswipe's waist to pull him closer, tighter in against his straining spike. A frisson of charge ran right up Sideswipe's backstrut at the feel of it. His desire whiplashed from wanting to spike Prime to wanting to ride Megatron's spike until he forgot his own designation.

It was utter, greedy instinct for his valve cover to snap back, for his hands to grip Megatron's shoulders to balance him as he pushed himself up, then sank down. Strong hands guided him, a hungry growl in his audials and another over his comm. Sideswipe met Sunstreaker's optics over Megatron's shoulder, and that look was SEARING. Sides opened up his side of the bond, fed Sunstreaker his sensory data, and Sunstreaker SHUDDERED.

Megatron chuckled, cupping his hands under Sideswipe's aft, lifting, then dropping Sideswipe into his next thrust. Both Autobots cried out at the sharp pleasure of sensory nodes firing as valve microplates flared and spread, as external nodes were jolted hard against pelvic plating. Megatron growled again, pleased and hungry. "It's been a long time since I had sparktwins."

Sunstreaker snarled back, moving to kneel behind Sideswipe. "These sparktwins're having YOU. Lie back."

There were more directions, perhaps a bit of negotiation, but Sideswipe missed it because Megatron NEVER STOPPED. His spike pistoned in and out in a steady rhythm, his pelvis arching up and twisting at the end to press against Sideswipe's external sensors, and between the sensations and Sideswipe's own lust AND Sunstreaker's...it was good. More than good. It was PHENOMENAL, and Sideswipe lost himself in it. He barely noticed when his gyros alerted him that they were shifting. He flailed a bit, not wanting to fall and not wanting to lose the thick spike steadily pounding him into overload, but Megatron's hands were there, around his waist, holding their interfaces tight together, and Sideswipe just found his shoulders and held on, optics blown wide because Megatron ended up on his BACK, legs spread, and Sideswipe whined in indecision and greed because he wanted THAT, too. He wanted the thick spike inside him and the valve that he couldn't see but through the filter of Sunstreaker's lust.

Megatron chuckled and Sunstreaker was silent and intent as he knelt between those powerful thighs, his hands spreading them wider. Sideswipe watched, avidly, carefully, optics taking in every nanoklik of the Slagmaker's expression as Sunstreaker pressed into his valve. That expression was smug, satisfied, and they hadn't even started yet.

Sunstreaker hissed, teeth sinking into Sideswipe's shoulder. "Tight..."

Sideswipe would have complained about the bite, but the pain was a jolt of sensation that his sensors chose to interpret tentatively as pleasure. His valve clenched down on the spike inside him. "See?" he moaned, "don't get fragged enough."

Megatron's hand cupped the side of his helm, holding him where he wanted him for a biting, possessive kiss. "Hardly anyone asks for it."

Sideswipe's spark was spinning crazily fast, his wariness and doubt and fear gone in the white rush of exultant pleasure. His fingers dug into struts and wiring, seeking and rubbing and finally just holding on. "Now...ok, now I want to know who DOES..." The mental images made Sideswipe's hips circle, his valve clench, and Megatron growled, thrusting up.

"Knock it off," Sunstreaker growled, and a slap of metal to metal made Megatron glare and Sideswipe giggle drunkenly at the realization that his twin had just smacked Megatron's aft. "We know how to do this. You moving's just going to throw us off."

Sideswipe rocked from side to side, just to feel the nodes in his valve fire at the pressure. "Nnnnghyeah, just...hah!" He leaned down, licking over a choice bit of protoform. "Just let us..."

Later, Sideswipe would look back on that moment, on the barely-glimpsed expression on Megatron's face, and almost recognize it for the step forward it was. Mostly he'd recognize it as the moment that Megatron stopped fighting and let them frag him. The moment he started GIVING in a not-just-physical way that Sideswipe would forever associate with Prime.

They HAD done this before, so though the position could easily turn into a mess of counter-active thrusting, with Megatron lying still, the twins could guide the pace. Sunstreaker's hands bracketed Megatron's hips, his spike thrusting in as Sideswipe rose up, retreating as Sideswipe slid down, counterpoints, pistons in a great machine that took motion and turned it into pleasure. Sideswipe peaked first, his lines bursting into effervescent pleasure that left him shaking and crying out into Megatron's shoulder with each shiver of movement.

Sunstreaker, hot and still thrusting behind him, set his teeth into Sideswipe's shoulder, a love-bite that made him moan and collapse forward across the broad, scarred chest. ::Off,:: Sunstreaker sent to him, the command accented with a bolt of purpose and desire that made Sideswipe moan and slide obligingly off Megatron with another moan. He felt drunk with pleasure and couldn't resist the urge to touch and kiss, to press that pleasure into plating and vent it into Megatron's field. He felt it when Sunstreaker started to thrust in earnest, the force translating through Megatron's heavy frame, and even the thought of that motion was too much. Sideswipe curled up at Megatron's side, one hand on his abdominal plating so he could feel the straining effort and great, slapping impacts secondhand.

Part of him was still wary, still caught in the unreality of the entire situation. That part, though, was slowly filling with a slow, soaking light that made him want to comm Primus and make sure that he'd not got the wrong mech, because surely he had better things to do than reassure a smart-mouthed frontliner. Surely if anyone needed it, it would be the OTHER smart-mouthed frontliner who hung like a tossing bonfire on the end of their bond.

Sideswipe shivered, optics offlining, as he let himself fall down the bond like jumping from a dropship, slotting in next to the sensation of-oh FRAG-of his spike encased in hot, tight utterly WET mesh. Sunstreaker's pace was demanding, uncompromising, and Megatron responded to that with equal ferocity. They fought with thrust and counterthrust, hands grasping and slipping, holds gained and lost on lubricant-slick plating. Finally, Sunstreaker caught Megatron's wrists, slamming them down to the dais with a triumphant growl and a hard thrust IN.

Megatron's answering growl was pleased. "You are mine."

Sunstreaker sneered. "I'm no Decepticon."

"No." Megatron arched, one leg hooking around Sunstreaker's hip. "You are a warrior." The glyph he used was old, pre-dating the war. _Warrior_, bright with all the old connotations of strength and honor and defense of Cybertron. He stretched up, licking along the edge of Sunstreaker's chestplate. "I can feel it in your spark. The fire. The will to fight. To conquer. To match yourself against your enemy. You're one of mine." _Mine_, heavy with the markers of the Lord High Protector, leader of the Cybertronian military that had long, long ago disintegrated into Autobots and Decepticons alike.

Sunstreaker faltered, rhythm lost, and Sideswipe could see, could FEEL his confusion, the very beginnings of the fear that Sunstreaker never showed and the anger he always did. "I don't belong to anybody. Not Prime. Not YOU."

"You could," Megatron said, either oblivious to or unconcerned by Sunstreaker's agitation. He reached up, and Sunstreaker looked startled as the Slagmaker's hand settled along the side of his helm, as Prime's hand had settled against Sideswipe's.

Sunstreaker and Megatron stared at each other for a long, long moment of absolutely nothing visible happening. They were like a piece of erotic statuary, caught in the middle of a wild frag.

Sideswipe offlined his optics and reached.

He could only feel it vaguely at first, but the longer he listened at the door that was his bond with Sunstreaker, the more the door opened and the more he could hear. It wasn't the sweet peace that Prime had been sporting, wasn't the voice of light and reassurance from the visions. No, this was a voice of thunder, of uncompromising strength with the smallest dash of mercy. It fell upon Sunstreaker like a storm, and for a moment Sideswipe was afraid. Afraid of what be left, and how it would react. Because Sideswipe was intimately familiar with how Sunstreaker dealt with authority.

And he had NO IDEA how Sunstreaker would deal with THIS authority.

Sideswipe crawled to his knees, hands reaching and finding Sunstreaker, his arms winding around golden protoform and half-armor, his spark drawn to Sunstreaker's like the second note to the first.

The storm crashed, and Sideswipe felt Sunstreaker try to fight it, but it was a STORM, as insubstantial as wind and rain. So instead Sunstreaker raged at it in that half-place between spark and processor, pain and anger pouring forth like energon from a wound until there was nothing left but the small, shaking kernel of fear he always carried deep within. Fear of losing Sideswipe. Fear of death. Fear of abandonment. Fear of being what he always was: too angry, too aggressive, too arrogant, too violent.

Too much. Too little. Unwanted.

The storm abated. The thunder-voice spoke, and Sideswipe couldn't understand it. It wasn't meant for him. But Sunstreaker heard it, and he trembled for a long, long moment in the abyss between one decision and another.

Then, with his usual bearings-to-the-wall attitude, he decided...and smirked down at Megatron. His optics were brilliant white as he said, "Doesn't change anything." He hooked Megatron's leg up higher. "Still gonna frag you into the ground."

Megatron smirked, and Sunstreaker thrust, and Sideswipe laughed and laughed. Delighted and satisfied and feeling LIGHT, he rolled to the side, utterly unsurprised that he rolled right into Prime. Sideswipe's arms circled Optimus' waist, his momentum carrying them both over again until he could wiggle between Prime's legs and press his swiftly-repressurizing spike against Prime's still-slick valve.

"So," Sideswipe said, circling his hips. "S'later."

"Mmm, so it is," Optimus said, one knee falling to the side.

There was a louder clang from behind him, as, perhaps, might be made by a frontliner and a Lord Protector...doing whatever it was they were doing. Sideswipe laughed, utterly unconcerned as he leaned down to kiss the Prime's smiling mouth, circled his hips once more, and thrust IN.

Optimus' valve cradled Sideswipe with a pulse of acceptance that washed over and into and through and right out the back of the frontliner's spark. It was warm and welcoming and very different from whatever clanging, growling, and apparently very satisfying thing was happening between Sunstreaker and Megatron.

And that was all right, Sideswipe thought. His spark settled down a tiny, comfortable distance from Sunstreaker's, and that was just fine.


	10. Reflection

Prowl scrutinized the entire scene. His sensor suite took in numbers, positions, states of threat...all that a good tactician would be expected to keep watch over. Eventually, he had to turn his tactical computer off. It kept informing him of how there would be no escape from the clearing without severe casualties, including the Prime. Even with it off, Prowl twitched every time a Decepticon laid hands on Prime. His audial sensors strained to monitor the activities on the dais, alert for any sign of distress.

He heard quite a lot, but even his most powerful analysis algorithms concluded that "distress" was not what the Prime's moans were signaling.

Still, Prowl watched, keeping track of who had been blessed by whom in what order. He tracked where the blessed were, who they had touched, and for how long. The conversion rate seemed to be 100%, as he'd never seen a mech come away from an encounter with a blessed without white optics. It seemed to be proceeding apace as well, with roughly 10% (6% Autobot, 4% Decepticon) of the total audience white-opticked and apparently thoroughly enjoying themselves. The numbers were increasing exponentially, with slight pauses when two blessed would decide to re-bless each other (Ironhide and Ratchet were particular culprits). It was inefficient, but on the bright side, it would usually gather them an audience that was then incredibly eager to partake of the blessing themselves.

The mecha mounting the dais had been no less enthusiastic. Rank and propriety had apparently broken down starting with the twins, and since then there had been a surprisingly orderly line waiting for their turn. Well, 'orderly' if one ignored that many in the line appeared to be unable to wait their turn with the dyad and turned to their fellow linegoers for a bit of relief in the meantime. Skywarp and Smokescreen had gotten so caught up in topping each other that they were eventually left by the wayside as the line continued on without them.

Everything, Prowl dared to think, after checking in with Bluestreak and Red Alert on the defensive perimeter, was going well.

He'd just eased back on his observation when he detected an approaching Decepticon. A _deliberately_ approaching Decepticon going out of his way to seek Prowl out as he lurked on the edges of the clearing. And a dangerous Decepticon at that. One that had been the focus of some of Prowl's tactical computer's worst worst-case scenarios.

"Autobot Commander Prowl." Soundwave's greeting was polite enough, and he stopped an equally polite distance away.

Prowl's doorwings, nevertheless, twitched restlessly.

Soundwave looked quite different without his visor and battlemask. He had adopted them, as far as Prowl could tell, when joining the Decepticons and had not been seen without them since. His face was smooth and serene, handsome even, and his optics pure white.

_Soundwave had climbed the dais alone, his cassettes already dispersed among the crowd or in the air. When he reached the top, Megatron was already there, smiling. "Out of the way, Prime," the Decepticon leader said, "this one is definitely mine."_

_Soundwave had gone down on one knee, his head bowed. "My Lord."_

_Megatron's hands had settled on Soundwave's shoulders, and Prowl's sensors had barely detected the shiver that had gone through Soundwave's frame at that touch. Or the harder one that had gone through him when Megatron had said, in a warm rumble, "My most loyal soldier."_

_Soundwave's hands had come up, like those of a supplicant, slowly, slowly to rest on Megatron's hips. Some subtle communication had passed between them, undetectable to Prowl's sensors, and slowly, Soundwave leaned in to nuzzle at Megatron's spike. Slowly, his glossa had stroked over the slick, heated metal, and slowly, he'd taken the length of it into his mouth._

_So slowly that some of the observers on the valley floor had grown bored, their attention turning to other, more actively exciting shows (Prime's round between Trailbreaker and Hound and Powerglide's demonstration of the right way to tweak a seeker's ailerons had drawn particular attention). Prowl, however, had found his optics drawn back again and again to the picture of Soundwave, unhurriedly licking and suckling every square millimeter of Megatron's spike, and of Megatron, hand cupping Soundwave's helm and not rushing him. The concentrated dedication that Soundwave had devoted to the job-his glossa leaving no bit of plate uncleaned before taking Megatron in-had been fascinating to watch, though there had been something in the interaction there, something worshipful and trusting, that was almost too intimate for public observation._

_Somehow, it hadn't kept Prowl from watching, even when Megatron had laid Soundwave back and sank into him with a rumble of satisfaction, that worshipped spike making Soundwave arch and moan._

"Commander Soundwave," Prowl replied. The perennially-suspicious part of his processor upped his peripheral sensors' sensitivity and concentrated on the feed, just on the off chance that this interaction was a distraction. It didn't...appear to be.

"Prowl, waiting to take part in the ritual?"

"...Yes," Prowl answered.

"Prowl, still concerned about Decepticon intentions?"

_Do turbofoxes have teeth?_ "Of course."

Soundwave nodded understandingly. "Sensible. Concern, however, unnecessary. Lord Megatron, threatened dire consequences for anyone who disrupts the ritual." He stepped exactly one step closer before stopping.

Prowl's doorwings twitched again. "You'll excuse me if I don't place much faith in Megatron's word."

Soundwave did not sound in the least offended. "Nonetheless, word given. Ritual, sancrosanct. All participants, safe."

"Mmm," Prowl said, the placeholder glyph meaning, _if you say so_, which of course meant _that's nice, I'm going to go back to watching our backs now, if you don't mind._ And he went back to doing that, hoping that Soundwave would take the hint and go off to interface with Astrotrain or the Constructicons or one of the other mechs still high on Prowl's list of possible problems.

Soundwave, however, just took another step closer to stand a polite distance from Prowl, turning to silently watch the proceedings as well.

Prowl's doorwings twitched. In annoyance this time, rather than alarm. After a long few minutes of the two of them watching the (increasingly writhing and moaning) gathering, Prowl said politely, "Are you not going to join the festivities?"

"Soundwave, hopes that Prowl will join him."

Prowl looked up from his projections of Time to 100% Blessed and reset his optics. "Me? Why...is that?"

::Do you need some backup, Prowl? Is he bothering you? I can comm Prime...::

::No, Red, it's fine. He's just..:: What? Nice? Friendly? That was giving the communications officer a bit too much credit, wasn't it? ::...under the influence of the blessing.::

::Well, yes.::

::It will be fine, Red. Prowl out.::

"Soundwave, always admired Prowl's intelligence, dedication, attention to detail." Without his helm accessories, Soundwave's face was much more expressive, and something in the quirk of his lips and the glow of his optics assured Prowl that this admiration was genuine. "Also, finds Prowl's frametype to be visually pleasing. Conclusion: interfacing with Prowl would be rewarding, mutually pleasurable experience."

"Well," Prowl said, unsure how to feel about the knowledge that he had always been Soundwave's type, let alone formulate a response to it. "Thank you, but-"

"Prowl wishes to be left alone," Soundwave suggested.

"Well-"

"Prowl wishes to be left out of the first major sacred ritual since leaving Cybertron."

"No, it's just-"

"Prowl has duties."

"Yes!"

"Prowl has duties which no other, such as Red Alert or other Autobots on perimeter could perform while Prowl receives Prima's Blessing."

Prowl narrowed his optics at Soundwave.

Soundwave took a small, careful step closer, then stopped again, waiting.

"You are being quite persistent," Prowl observed.

"Prowl, observant."

"Might I ask why that is?"

Soundwave shrugged. "Prowl, desirable. Also, as Autobot officer, important to convince Prowl of Decepticon intentions."

"Ah. And those intentions are?"

"Decepticons, support Lord High Protector. Lord High Protector, wishes for all to take part in successful ritual."

"Including me, I suppose?"

A final step and Soundwave was close enough to touch...but didn't. Not even with the vibrating hum of his EMF, which Prowl could feel tingling at the edge of his own. "Soundwave, wishes to give Prowl Prima's blessing. Soundwave, does not desire to make Prowl uncomfortable or upset. Prowl, always free to refuse Soundwave's advances. Communication," Soundwave said, his lips curling in amusement, "is key."

Prowl stared at Soundwave hard for a long moment. It was unheard of for a mech to refuse a blessing. It was part of the ritual, of accepting the common origins of all mechs and Primus' love for all. And yet...this was _Soundwave_. Dangerously observant, ferociously loyal Soundwave.

Ferociously loyal Soundwave, who had been within mechanometers of the Prime, who had been himself blessed by the very Lord Protector that Prime had himself blessed.

Prowl sighed, then immediately regretted how put-upon he sounded. A ritual of pleasure, connection, and sharing, and here he was, acting like Soundwave had asked him to orchestrate a five-battalion live-fire exercise.

Luckily, Soundwave appeared to understand the sigh and the slightly sheepish look that succeeded it. Very properly, he held out a hand, palm-up, and Prowl took it with only a slight hesitation. "I must admit that I have never terribly enjoyed such things," Prowl said.

"Query: holy rituals, interfacing...or hand-holding?" Soundwave asked, fingers closing over Prowl's. He still held a faint charge, which grounded to the edge of one of Prowl's plates in a tickling zing.

Prowl recognized that Soundwave was being purposely ridiculous with that last, but after a moment he had to admit, truthfully, "All three."

"Acknowledged." Soundwave moved the last half-step closer to close into Prowl's personal space. His entire frame, Prowl realized, was staticky with charge, his EMF thrumming with a content desire that Prowl never would have expected. Prowl's sensorwings shifted, opening cautiously to the datastream. "Prowl, found pleasure in interfacing at all?" Soundwave asked.

"Well...yes, I suppose. It just never seemed terribly important."

"A distraction from duty? Not worth the time spent? Or...not pleasurable enough?" Soundwave's fingers slid over joints, across sensor pads, teasing seams with pressure and heat. It was...distracting.

"A...bit of all three?"

"Hmm," Soundwave hummed, optics on Prowl as he lowered his mouth to Prowl's hand. As Prowl watched, he vented warm air over the sensor pads, glossa laving and dipping into the joints and seams of Prowl's palm. Prowl knew, on an intellectual level, that such was supposed to be flirtatious, pleasurable, but he had never found it so when previous lovers had tried it. Soundwave's attempt was, surprisingly, one of the best yet. Something about the deliberate, swiping pressure under plates and along the usually-hidden sensors at the base of Prowl's fingers was...interesting. Something that made Prowl's fingers want to twitch away and then press in for more.

"This, feel good?" Soundwave asked.

"Yes," Prowl admitted.

Soundwave slowly reached out his other hand, laying it against Prowl's side and sweeping it up and back along a torso seam. The touch made Prowl's plating clamp tight in concern, but Soundwave merely repeated the gesture, his mouth continuing to lave warm, wet pressure and suction on Prowl's fingers. When Prowl's plates eased, Soundwave trailed warm shivers of electromagnetic waves along his lateral seams, all the way up and back to the base of Prowl's doorwings. THAT made Prowl gasp, his doorwings twitching hard as a buzz of pleasure ricocheted from sensor to sensor.

Soundwave smiled. "This, feel good?"

"Yes," Prowl said, more breathlessly than he'd have liked.

Soundwave dipped his head to Prowl's wrist, lips closing over Prowl's wrist socket, tongue flicking out to lubricate the pins and then SUCKING.

Prowl was uncertain what noise he made, as pleasure burned through his circuits. The sensors in that port were not wired to take such input, should have rejected the data as anomalous, as making no SENSE, and yet the press and dance of a flexible glossa where only a hard and unyielding plug had ever been seated was...

"This," Soundwave breathed over the socket, the brush of ventilated air making Prowl shiver, "...pleasurable?"

"Yes," Prowl gasped.

Soundwave made a sound of satisfaction. "Soundwave's conclusion: Prowl's previous partners unskilled or impatient."

Prowl had a reflexive urge to defend those past partners, but as they were none of them present and Soundwave had already proven himself an adept at such things, he was willing to allow that Soundwave might be correct.

Soundwave pulled back, straightening slightly. "Soundwave, believes can bring Prowl more than enough pleasure to make interfacing worth Prowl's time. Prowl, consents to allowing Soundwave to try?"

Prowl chuckled. "How polite."

Soundwave nodded agreeably. "Explicit consent, efficient, gives smallest possibility of misunderstanding or giving offense."

"Oh, I completely agree." Charge danced in static under Soundwave's hand. "Approve, as well."

Soundwave waited, fingers patiently tracing back and forth along Prowl's side. Baaack and forth...

Prowl had to admit that the communication officer's patience appealed to him. As did the particular EM frequencies Soundwave was stroking along his seams. "All right. I consent to let you try."

Soundwave smiled with every evidence of genuine pleasure at the idea, and the expression made him surprisingly beautiful. "Excellent."

Prowl's helm jerked to the side as Laserbeak swooped in and landed on a tree limb not far away. The cassette dipped his head at Prowl respectfully but made no move to get closer.

"Laserbeak, enjoys watching," Soundwave explained, unperturbed.

Prowl chuckled. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Prowl, objects to audience?"

The Autobot SIC's smile was wry. "I would be out of luck if I did, wouldn't I be? Privacy appears to be in short supply this evening." He gestured with his free hand to the clearing and then nodded acknowledgingly to the cassette. Laserbeak settled on his branch with an amused glyph to Soundwave indicating his approval of Soundwave's choice of partner.

"Prowl, objects to anything else? Practices, not wanted?"

"Ah...such as?"

"Sensory experiences, not enjoyed? Parts of frame Prowl does not want touched during tactile play?"

"None...that I can think of." Prowl could not rule out the possibility that he would find something to object to later. "Only...a gentle touch on the doorwings, if you please. They are very sensitive."

Soundwave nodded. "Noted. Prowl, enjoys systems connection?"

"No." It was a lie. With a trusted partner, nothing could overload him faster than matching processors, than feeling the strain as they fed sensory data back and forth in an endless, blinding loop. But linking processors necessarily meant a hardline, and there was no way, blessing or no, that Prowl was going to give one of the Decepticons' best hackers a hardline into his processor. Something knowing in Soundwave's optics made Prowl admit, "Not...in these circumstances."

"Acknowledged," Soundwave said, again not appearing offended. Instead, he leaned in, his EMF laying over Prowl's as his hands settled on Prowl's sides, his head cocking to one side. "Soundwave, may kiss Prowl?"

"...If you'd like?"

So Soundwave did, and it was...nice. Pleasant, even, though Prowl got more enjoyment out of the electromagnetic heat of Soundwave's spark than he did any coordinated movement of lip components. Still, though, he found himself relaxing into the embrace. Soundwave was being...beyond polite, really. This level of pre-interface communication was unprecedented, in Prowl's experience. Perhaps it was calculated to put Prowl at ease, but it was certainly working. He had never been fond of interfacing precisely because there seemed to be so little structure to it, so few hard and fast rules. It was all glances and implications and unspoken wants. After a few mediocre encounters, Prowl had given up on the whole practice as a highly inefficient use of his time, even for something meant only to be pleasurable.

Soundwave was certainly going about it the right way, however, in Prowl's opiniion. The discussion of what Prowl did and did not want was reassuring in a way that Prowl had not expected. Being able to know what to expect allowed Prowl's processor to cautiously dump variables, leaving him less distracted and more able to focus on the issue at hand. Or mouth, as the case may be.

Or spark. Prowl had never before paid much attention to anything but the most obvious spark energy pulses, even during interfacing. Now, though, brought in close with the kiss, Prowl could feel Soundwave's spark cycling pleasantly, his field utterly placid against Prowl's. Prowl's sensors, good as they were, could detect nothing untoward: Soundwave was unarmed, his systems running only as warm as might be expected, and his spark frequency was backed with resonances that Prowl's sensors found...soothing. The blessing, Prowl supposed. Certainly they did not cycle like anything else that Prowl had ever encountered.

::Prowl?::

::All clear, Red.::

A glyph of worry and anxiety. ::If he goes for your systems, I'm taking countermeasures, Prowl.::

::Acknowledged.::

Prowl felt it only fair to warn Soundwave of this.

Soundwave nodded, pulling his mouth away from the lip component he was nibbling to respond. "Soundwave, will not connect...unless Prowl asks for and clears it first."

A few kliks ago Prowl would have found the idea ridiculous, but now, with his wrist socket still tingling from Soundwave's attentions, the idea now seemed just as irresponsible but several times more tempting.

Soundwave, meanwhile, seemed to have a plan. This plan involved starting at the top of Prowl and working his way down. Carefully. Thoughtfully. Thoroughly. He began with a reminder that Prowl should tell him if he wished Soundwave to stop. Then he licked the sensory arrays in Prowl's chevron, sucking on the tips while his fingers rubbed at the base. He worked his way slowly downwards, fingers sliding around to stroke the back of Prowl's helm while they kissed again, at length. Then those strong, blunt fingers dug into the linkages of Prowl's neck while Soundwave investigated the sounds Prowl made when his neck cables were kissed and sucked on. He made his way down one shoulder, then continued on down Prowl's arm, fingers and glossa sliding under plates now loosened with desire and the need to dump as much heat as possible.

By the time he made it to Prowl's wrist socket again, Prowl was all but trembling, and he bit back on a cry of pleasure as warm lips closed once again on the components, pointed glossa circling around the pins in a heady spiral that left Prowl utterly unaware of anything but his and Soundwave's frames.

::?:: Soundwave pinged, his mouth quite busy.

"How...how do you..."

::Prior to the war, Soundwave worked with several Praxians. Communications and analysis frametypes, similar to Prowl's.:: Soundwave reached up, one hand stroking over a mostly-hidden neural line tucked up under the thin, flexible plates joining Prowl's doorwings to his back. ::Soundwave, trained in proper care and pleasuring of such frametypes.::

Prowl's back arched as he cried out, pleasure flashing along his sensorwing and stuttering along his neural net. His hands groped, reaching out for something to anchor him and finding Soundwave's shoulders convenient.

::Prowl, beautiful in pleasure,:: Soundwave observed as his mouth gave one last, loving lick to Prowl's socket and skated back along the inside of Prowl's arm. His hands remained on Prowl's sensorwing linkages, and yes, he'd been trained WELL, as he knew just where to stroke and how not to get his fingers caught as the appendages twitched and shuddered in response. Soundwave's lips moved downward, over Prowl's chest, now relieved of most of the kibble that made up Prowl's hood. Soundwave pressed a lingering kiss to the heated plating over Prowl's engine block and continued on, further down over Prowl's ventrum.

Prowl's ventilations picked up as it became increasingly difficult to concentrate. To keep track of everything that Soundwave was doing. Prowl ached to turn his tactical computer back on, to set it to the task of analyzing all this new information and its implications...

Prowl's wings twitched in surprise as Soundwave sank slowly to his knees. "Prowl," Soundwave vented against Prowl's hip, "does not need to analyze this." Prowl's processor fairly stuttered as Soundwave-Third in Command of the Decepticons, the cold interrogator, Megatron's silent optics and audials, SOUNDWAVE-licked a bold stripe over Prowl's interface panel. "Prowl, merely needs to experience and enjoy." When a moment passed in which Prowl could do nothing but nod in acknowledgment, Soundwave asked, "Prowl, wishes to continue?"

Prowl nodded, more forcefully this time.

"Soundwave, wishes to taste Prowl's spike. Permission granted?"

"Yes!" Prowl's answer was half-moan, half-gasp as his interface panel slid back eagerly, the action completely autonomic for the first time in vorns.

Soundwave wasted no time, optics narrowing in satisfaction as he pressed lips and glossa to the bared metal. Exploring, testing, tasting with the same thoroughness he'd shown to the rest of Prowl's frame.

"Prowl, approves?" Soundwave asked, looking up the length of Prowl's frame. "Wants more?"

Prowl glared at him. "You're enjoying this."

Soundwave smiled, slow and dark...and waited.

"Yes, damn you," Prowl hissed, hips rolling to urge Soundwave back to his spike. "More."

Soundwave was apparently only too happy to comply. Prowl's sensor net sang under the attention, threat assessment protocols completely shutting down in the face of pleasure and a growing, completely irrational sense of safety. That last had nothing to do with Soundwave's intake cradling and gently squeezing his spike but instead seemed to seep in through the joins in his plating, lapping at his internals like a warm oilbath and suffusing his spark. He felt a last burst of panic at the irrational reaction, looking down at Soundwave to make sure that they hadn't been connected while he'd been distracted, but no, the Decepticon communications officer was still devoting all his attention to systematically testing every sensor node on Prowl's spike with his glossa.

_Rest, Prowl,_ echoed through his spark. _Enjoy. All is well. All will be well._

_Is it? Will it?_

Amusement. _Do you doubt?_

Prowl gasped, ventilation hissing as Soundwave found a particularly sensitive join and flicked it, again...and again. Prowl's systems, rocked and trembling on the edge of something that was and was not overload, could only spit out basic machine-code: _insufficient information/unable to compute/more data required_.

His spark rang with the answering notification: _incoming connection_.

Data streamed into his processor, the calculations filling him. The sensation eclipsed even the slow, hot suction on his spike with the sheer bliss of his neural net being properly used, every thread occupied, every microprocessor engaged. His entire frame hummed with strain translated into whirring fans and frantically calculating relays. His tactical computer came back online merely to relieve the backlog in his queue. The requests came in a steady flow that was like nothing Prowl had ever experienced. He barely knew what he was processing, could not begin to parse the markers for time and probability, the swarm of variables that attended them like wheeling seekers.

An algorithm-just one, beautiful, infinitely complex algorithm that occupied his entire processor-took shape in his cortex, and as the data flowed into it, Prowl shook with the realization of what was happening...because he HAD experienced something like this before.

Long, long ago, back on Cybertron, the scientific cityformer Cyclotron had been performing time-sensitive research for the Autobots. Damaged as Cyclotron had been, he had suggested networking as a way of increasing his processing speed. Every analytic-grade frametype had been called upon to help, and Prowl and Optimus Prime himself had lain for a full cycle in Cyclotron's inner sanctum, connected to the cityformer as they lent their processing power to his.

This was like that, though different. The sense of being annexed on the machine level, of being a part of a larger whole, was the same, but this was on a much, much grander scale. With Cyclotron, Prowl had been able to see the shape of what he'd been working on, of the model he was building. Now, it was as if his perspective had shrunk, his piece of the processing puzzle smaller...or as if his processor worked on an incredibly large piece of an incomprehensibly huge whole. And while Cyclotron had been polite, even impersonal in his connections, this...this was not. This data was ripe with packets of _acceptance/love_, riddled with markers for _pride_ and _desire_ and _happiness-after-long-sadness_.

_Primus..._

For one long klik, Prowl's processor, slaved to Primus' own, aided in calculating his own fate.

Prowl's awareness came back to his own frame just as he overloaded. He cried out, his sensor net singing with pleasure as Soundwave did SOMETHING with dentae and glossa and field that sent Prowl careering over the edge, the pleasure taking Prowl out at the knees. Prowl clutched at Soundwave's shoulders, and Soundwave's hands and arms were there, catching Prowl around the thighs and supporting his weight as he eased Prowl through another overload.

When Prowl could see again, both of them were on the ground, arms twined and anchoring them as they leaned against each other. Prowl noted the spectrum of his own optics and automatically updated his records of blessed mechs, even as he noted that he didn't...feel very different.

Except for the obvious, of course.

"Thank you," Prowl said, easing back so he could actually look at Soundwave. His sensor wings noted how warm the Decepticon was running, and he realized that Soundwave had not overloaded at all, though he was certainly aroused.

Prowl felt that quite unfair, all considered. His hands slid down from Soundwave's shoulders to his chest compartment, fingers lingering on the intricate connections that were usually hidden by his armor. Soundwave's ventilations caught, and Prowl paused, realizing that he was breaking his own rules. He folded his fingers into his palms. "What would you like?"

Soundwave smiled, fingers coming up to cup Prowl's own, to drag them back to where they'd been. "Soundwave, wants Prowl to touch." He leaned in, nuzzling at Prowl's neck cables. "Wants Prowl to enjoy. When Prowl has recovered..." He sent a constructed image: Prowl on hands and knees, Soundwave taking his valve from behind while he stroked Prowl's sensor wings.

Prowl shivered. "I...would not be averse to that." He drew his fingers hesitantly along the top of Soundwave's cassette compartment. "Is this all right? I've never interfaced with your frametype before."

"Acknowledged," Soundwave purred, drawing Prowl's fingers along the sides of his chest compartment and under... "Soundwave, certain that Prowl is a fast learner."

Laserbeak, helpfully, sent Prowl diagrams.


End file.
